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Joe Biden is the Perfect President

...for this exact moment in time only.

By Charlotte T. MartinPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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Joe Biden is the Perfect President
Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash

There are writers on both sides of the political spectrum that could very finely articulate why Joe Biden feels like a consolation prize who will likely be nothing more than a stop gap president of otherwise very little consequence.

And on this point, I heartily disagree.

Joe Biden is exactly what this country needs right now: a specter of death. A harbinger of the end of the American Political System.

We’ve got a conservative right wing whose more (ahem) extreme members can’t stand him because he represents Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. The less extreme, still-incredibly-conservative members of the right don’t like him because he isn’t Trump. And the middling, “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” right don’t like him because…I’m not sure. But they wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of aviator sunglasses, I’d guess.

We’ve also got a liberal left whose most extreme members (heyyy, Leftists!) would like to burn down the entire structure and reconstruct. A little less extreme liberals are very very happy with the outcome of the 2020 election: at last, sanity is restored and we can stop donating to all those GoFundMe’s! And then we have the middling, “I have a friend who’s Black” liberals who don’t see the problem with saying “All lives matter” if you just let them explain.

As a nation, we fall somewhere on the enraged-to-uninspired side of the patriotism spectrum these days, and I say it’s time to use that momentum for good.

How absurd is it that when the liberal left “wins”, a large portion of its registered members are not excited about, disillusioned by, and/or have no faith in their “winning” candidate?

How absurd is it that the “winner” of an election only barely has the majority vote?

Is this the twenty-first century or not??

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of the dream deferred. I am tired of waiting around while placeholder presidents stop the bleeding, make promises they don’t keep, and stave off progress while my fellow citizens die to the tune of 500,000, freeze to death in their homes in Texas, and waste away in prison cells.

I’m sick of hearing the poor—white, Black, Latinx, Asian, Native American—cry out for help while my government does nothing to help them.

I’m sick of watching our elderly citizens get pushed to the threadbare fringes of our healthcare system so that their family caretakers must decide: should they prioritize their parents or their children?

I’m sick of seeing millionaires and billionaires walk in and out of court (if they’re even asked to appear) while my fellow citizens, left for everything but dead by the government, are locked away so one of those millionaires or billionaires can make a buck on their incarceration.

Excuse me if it’s presumptuous to say so, but I think we’re all wondering the same thing: is this as good as it gets?

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? For real?

There must be something better than the same-old-same-old politics of the last 200 years that have gotten us class divide, "tough on crime" pro-prison reform, and consolation-prize presidents.

There must be someone out there who loves Jesus and guns and also wants children to be able to go to school without having to run active shooter drills.

There must be someone out there who would never ever have an abortion themselves but is willing to fight like hell for policies that make abortions safe for those who do.

There must be someone out there who is pro-military and wants to support our veterans in a systemic, sustainable way, and also wants to demilitarize the police.

The fate of our nation doesn’t depend on which party won or which party wins the next round, it rests on the question of whether we will continue to let the parties exist. We will hold ourselves prisoners to this system if we don’t wake up to the fact that none of us are happy with the way things are. None of us down here in the lower 99%, anyway.

Whenever you see him, hear him, and want to fawn over his rescue dog, ask yourself: is this is good as it gets? Is this the limit of the American Dream? The American Spirit? Or is it possible there is something more than this?

The revolution begins if and only if we join forces on the left and right to tear down the structure designed to divide us and pit us against one another.

Without Joe Biden, I may never have fully understood that. Thanks, Joe.

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About the Creator

Charlotte T. Martin

Queer Wisconsinite here to make some bold claims.

Better known as @charlottethewriter on Instagram.

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