The Biden Inauguration: Hollow Ring To Plea For Unity From Those Who Divide
Jan. 22, 2021 — Surrounded by tens of thousands of troops and a sparse crowd, the inauguration of Joe Biden as President of the United States had little in common with the usual celebratory mood which surrounds the peaceful transfer of power in the American republic. It bore instead a distinct resemblance to the installation of a regime which seized power in a coup in a banana republic — which, in fact, is what happened! With a majority of Republicans convinced that the election was stolen from Donald Trump, and angry that neither courts nor legislatures seriously investigated the charges of fraud, many view Biden as an “illegitimate” president. The Inauguration occurred two weeks after a deadly riot overwhelmed security forces at the U.S. Capitol, on January 6, which disrupted efforts by Trump supporters in the Congress who were engaged in a fully legal, Constitutional process of challenging the certification of Electors for Biden, due to evidence of voting irregularities. It occurred one week after the House of Representatives impeached President Trump for a second time, accusing him of inciting the “insurrection” which led to the storming of the Capitol, in a rush to judgement in a highly charged environment.
Perhaps given the turmoil and uncertainty caused by these events, it is not surprising that President Biden emphasized a call for “unity … unity for a divided nation” in his inaugural address. Yet this call had a decidedly hollow ring to it, as Biden and his supporters, instead of promoting policies which can foster unity, are moving to criminalize any opposition to what he was installed to do as President, going so far as to label Trump supporters as “racists” and even “terrorists.” This is hardly a language which would facilitate unity and reconciliation!
Obviously uninterested in acting in a manner which would promote unity, the cabal behind the four-year effort to overturn the election of Trump in 2016, and which rigged the 2020 election for Biden, is acting to increase the polarization in the nation. In their minds, they have finally succeeded in removing Trump — and now they are going for scorched earth destruction of Trump and his supporters. Trump himself, in addition to facing an impeachment trial in the Senate, has been threatened with the prospect of numerous civil and criminal charges against him, his family and his businesses in the courts. Leading Democrats and intelligence/security officials are gearing up for an assault against him and the seventy-five million Americans who voted for him. Hillary Clinton, for example, still bitter over her 2016 loss to Trump, called for a “9/11-style Commission” to investigate the riot on January 6, focused not on the pre-planning that went into it — which would show that, rather than an incitement by Trump, security officials were aware well in advance that plans had been made for an attack, and did nothing to prepare for it — but revisiting the lies of Russiagate, decrying Trump as one who “disdains democracy” and remains under the control of Putin! She was joined on her podcast by House Speaker Pelosi, who agreed to establish such a commission, and reminded listeners proudly that she had once confronted Trump by telling him, “With you, Mr. President, all roads lead to Putin.” Both described the riot as “a gift to Putin.”
Simultaneously, such vitriol was reinforced by unhinged drone murderer and former CIA chief John Brennan, in his description of the Trump movement as an “unholy alliance … of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.” Brennan played a leading role against Trump in fabricating the debunked narrative of Russiagate, and has yet to be prosecuted for the damage to the nation resulting from his lies. Also chiming in is the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Democratic think tank, which claims that the coalition built by Trump “could become a full-fledged insurgency that poses a significant and enduring threat to all Americans.” CAP’s statement calls for deploying the “full use of existing tools and authorities” to combat it. One of those tools which is supported by the Democrats is social media censorship, which has even been imposed against the accounts that President Trump had successfully employed, to combat the mainstream media lies and slanders against him.
CNN went so far as to feature a “cult expert” who asserted that Trump supporters are part of a “cult", and they must be “deprogrammed."
A Strategy For True Unity
Those who long for “unity” should revisit the efforts of Abraham Lincoln, who famously intervened against the toxic polarization which had been stoked for years against the American republic by British imperial interests, in his speech of June 16, 1858, accepting his party’s nomination for U.S. Senator. Known for its most prominent line, “A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand,” Lincoln understood that the division of the Union into half-slave, half-free “cannot endure permanently.” This address was a prescient warning, delivered less than two years before his election as President, and nearly three years prior to the beginning of the bloody civil war, which began shortly after he was inaugurated.
The deeper issue addressed by Lincoln in this speech and in his presidency, was the battle between two completely irreconcilable systems: the American System, as forged by the Founding Fathers after their successful War of Independence against the British Empire, and the British System of “free trade.” Slavery was imposed by the British system, which intended to preserve a quasi-colonial status for America, as an agrarian society of planter aristocrats, using slave labor to produce cheap cotton for British textile mills. The southern aristocrats, backed by London, were allied with New York bankers and Boston’s merchant trading class, both of which retained close ties to their former colonial masters. The Constitution of the Confederate States of America endorsed slavery and state rights, favoring a weak central government with little power. The Confederacy was seen by influential British Foreign Minister Lord Palmerston as the best way to weaken the United States, presaging a reincorporation of at least part of the country into the Empire.
Lincoln’s revival of the American System was crucial not only for a victory in the Civil War, but in the development of post-war America as the strongest industrial economy in the world. His commitment to building the Transcontinental railroad became a driver for not only westward expansion, but in unifying the nation. This was furthered by the adoption of Hamiltonian credit policies and the use of tariffs to protect America’s fledgling industries. This application of the American system allowed for the advance of modern industry, especially in developing the steel and engineering capabilities required for the production of machine tools, which boosted the productivity of labor both in manufacturing and agricultural production, which over time led to the development of higher living standards for working people.
By decisively defeating the attempts by the British and their U.S. allies to divide the U.S., Lincoln intended to unite the people around a national mission to develop the continent, with far-reaching effects internationally. This succeeded, despite his assassination by a network directed from London, through restoring the American System model created by Alexander Hamilton and his allies among the Foundin Fathers. This model, revived by Lincoln and advisers such as Henry Carey and E. Peshine Smith, was adopted by many other nations after 1876, including Bismarck’s Germany, France, Russia and Japan. This advance in America, when copied in such plans as Count Witte’s Trans-Siberian railroad for Russia and Eurasia, and the proposed Berlin to Baghdad line, was seen as an existential threat by the British Empire, which depended on its military control of the seas, and imposition of free trade to dominate the world economy. Equally galling to the London-based financial empire was Lincoln’s alliance with Tsar Alexander II of Russia, who deployed ships of the Russian navy to prevent a blockade of northern ports by the British fleet, a repeat of Russia’s support for the American colonies, through its role in the League of Armed Neutrality, during the War of Independence against the British. The roots of Russiagate, the desperate effort to prevent Trump from collaboration with Putin and Russia, can be seen in the Empire’s fear historically of such an alliance.
What the Empire intends for a Biden administration is to return to the endless war policies of the Bush and Obama-Biden administrations, and imposing a global central banker’s dictatorship, called the “Great Reset,” in support of a genocidal Green New Deal. To succeed in doing this requires crushing the Trump movement in the U.S., using the kind of gang-countergang tactics historically applied by the Empire to crush their opponents, which means increasing the polarization.
National Mission For Global Development
The attempt by President Trump to define a global strategy for a sovereign U.S., free from the endless regional wars fought on behalf of global neoliberal and geopolitical interests, is what made him a target of the City of London, and its allies in the U.S. “Military Industrial Complex.” It is the policies of the interlocking directorates of global cartels, which in addition to inciting “endless” wars, impose the forced underdevelopment of the former colonial world, with the neoliberal austerity and free trade policies which have reduced living standards in the trans-Atlantic region, to maintain their power, which is needed to protect their collapsing, bankrupt system through genocidal looting. This is what has driven the polarization which today increases geopolitical tensions. Add to that the deliberate fostering of “identity politics” inside nations, which mirrors the geopolitical divide-and-conquer strategy applied in international policies, which pits smaller groups against each other in a fight for a shrinking pie, and you have a formula for a Hobbesian world of each against all.
A compelling argument to counter this polarization was presented by Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her weekly dialogue on January 21. Asked to comment of Biden’s hypocritical call for “unity", she offered some good advice for him:
Noting that he is a Catholic, she said, “...he should read the Encyclical of Pope Paul VI that he wrote in 1967, which was called Populorum Progressio, or On the Development of Peoples, and in which he said that the ‘the new name for peace is development.’ And in the same way, one can say that the ‘new name for unity is development.’ The only way one can hope to have unity inside the United States would be to put on the agenda an economic program which would give productive jobs to every American, which would undo the economic injustices which are, after all, the reason why Trump was elected in 2016, and why all the Trump voters are still sticking to Trump. So, if he wants to have unity, he should make development the new name for unity, and internationally it would go in the same direction.”
While it appears unlikely that, as presently constituted, the Biden administration would heed the founder of the Schiller Institute’s sage advice, she noted that the strategic, social, economic and political crises confronting it require a change in direction. To succeed in avoiding a global systemic economic/financial collapse, and more wars, she advocated adopting Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Power agreement to establish a New Bretton Woods, and implementing his Four Economic Laws, which are derived from applying the American System of the Founding Fathers and Lincoln. A sovereign U.S. would find common cause with the sovereign nations of Russia, China and India, which in alliance would be able to forge an economic and military power to defeat the British Empire and its fifth column in the U.S. and the European Union.
Further, she believes that a significant segment of the Trump movement would support a shift in this direction, as Trump’s campaign in 2016 incorporated elements of LaRouche’s approach, including a return to Glass Steagall banking separation, infrastructure investment and fostering scientific and technological advance at the frontiers of science — echoing his Four Laws — and cooperation with Russia and China. While the combined effects of Russiagate, the COVID pandemic, and opposition from anti-Trump layers in the Republican Party, who joined with their fellow War Hawks and neoliberals in the Democratic Party against him, sabotaged the potential of the Trump administration, the Trump base remained loyal to the President, and could be mobilized again to back the principles of the American System.
If committing the citizens of the U.S. to a unified national mission is truly the goal, then Zepp-LaRouche’s strategy, based on returning to the principles of the American System, must be deployed to defeat the British Empire and its lackeys in America.