Mcparland

Many of the priorities on the Biden agenda will alienate the right.

THE U.S. BUILT ENOUGH PIPELINES TO EQUAL 10 KEYSTONE XLS. — JEREMA

In an extended version of a 2018 standup performance now on Netflix, comedian Chris rock goes straight to one of the many divisions tearing at the u.s.: police shootings of Black people.

“you’d think that cops would occasionally shoot a white kid, just to make it look good,” he observes in his opening remarks. “I want to live in a world with real equality … a world where an equal amount of white kids get shot every month.”

To call it biting doesn’t begin to get there. Later he expounds at length on his efforts to convince his children that all things white are dangerous, including household appliances. It’s searing, and it’s funny, but it’s also the America we’ve come to recognize over decades of a slow-moving divide that’s produced a society in which people who can afford it send their kids to private schools (because the public ones aren’t good or safe enough), get private health care and live in gated communities where seminars are offered on “active shooters,” i.e. someone with a gun looking for people to kill.

The republic that was created as a bastion of hope and freedom for millions of europeans fleeing injustice is divided along just about every line possible: social, political, economic, racial and religious. Joe Biden, who becomes president Wednesday, is a devout Catholic who goes to mass every Sunday and says the only career he ever considered outside politics was the priesthood. yet he won just 52 per cent of the Catholic vote, and just days after he takes office Washington streets are due to fill with a mass march against abortion. As have Canadian prime ministers, Biden accepts church opposition to abortion but rejects imposing his view on the country.

Biden has made known that his inaugural address, and the opening months of his presidency, will involve determined efforts to bring “a message of unity” to a festering, sore-headed country, so irate it’s deemed necessary to have 20,000 troops on hand to keep the peace until he’s finished talking. That very day he’ll begin the process of rolling back four years of Trumpism with a flurry of executive orders cancelling his predecessor’s policies on climate change, travel bans, student loans and housing.

Perhaps most sweeping is a plan to introduce a bill opening the way to citizenship for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. People who have been briefed on the bill say it would create an eightyear path towards citizenship, with quicker routes for migrants already shielded under existing laws. Those who arrived as children, or fled violent countries, would get automatic green cards enabling them to live and work permanently in the u.s.

It’s a direct and deliberate rebuke of the anti-immigrant measures that thrilled Trump supporters and mobilized his army of fervent admirers. One of the very few public sightings of the president in the days since his followers stormed the Capitol was a visit to Texas to admire the wall he ordered built along the Mexican border, and which he considers a defining accomplishment. Some 727 kilometres of wall have been built, though all but 76 kilometres of that replaced barriers that were already there. rather than make Mexico pay for construction, as Trump vowed, he redirected billions from drug programs and military budgets to pay the cost. yet it’s a wall, and his supporters are proud of it.

Biden says he won’t spend another nickel on Trump’s project. But while that may please those Americans who never liked the optics or the methods in any case, it’s not likely to soothe the wounds the new president and his adherents insist must be addressed. If anything it’s likely to convince many of the 74 million people who voted for Trump they were right all along in warning that democrats would govern largely for democrats, despite what they might say to the contrary.

Many of the priorities on the Biden agenda fit that category. rejoining the Paris climate accord — another move he says he’ll make on his first day — may reverse a departure activists scorned, but will further alienate those who viewed the accord as international showboating of little practical value.

Cancelling or reducing student debt will come as a godsend to millions of students shackled to crippling loans from the moment they graduate, but also highlight the gap between those fortunate enough to get college degrees and the ranks of workers left behind by the disappearance of decent blue-collar jobs at a living wage. Adding 11 million legalized immigrants to the workforce isn’t bound to improve their outlook either, even if most of the migrants have been there all along, doing jobs Americans avoid.

Not to say Biden’s policy plans are misguided or undesirable, but if his overwhelming goal, apart from defeating COVID-19, is to bring the country together, salve its wounds and revive its sense of destiny, he’s not likely to achieve it by drawing a line around everything Trump did and pronouncing it null and void. The realization Trumpism forced on the u.s. was the extent to which an enormous section of the population felt abandoned, disregarded and disdained. The more Trump appealed to their bitterness, the stronger he became. That feeling isn’t likely to leave them if they sense the next four years entail a concerted attempt to push them back where they came from, so they can once again be ignored.

DIVIDED ALONG JUST ABOUT EVERY LINE POSSIBLE.