(ThyBlackMan.com) There is no question how I will vote in a contest between President Joe Biden and the toxic prior President. Biden wins every time. But I’m just me, I’m not the pollsters, the young’uns, the rural votes, and the disaffected. Listing Biden’s accomplishments and comparing them to those of others might be instructive if people paid attention to facts. Too many voters are motivated by feelings, and they aren’t feeling good about their own economic circumstances, the uncertainty of recession, about our international involvement, especially in Ukraine, and even about is age and his health.
Now, for a month Israel has been brutally bombing Gaza, bombing hospitals, refugee camps, schools and more. They say it is retaliation for the brutal Hamas on Israel on October 7, which no one condones, and most have repudiated in strong terms. But an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind, and in their bloodlust to retaliate against Hamas, Israel has slaughtered nearly ten thousand innocent Palestinians including thousands of children. They have denied the Gazan population the mere basics, like drinking water, electricity, fuel and health care, reducing doctors to performing surgery in the dark and without anesthesia. They have denied requests for a cease fire or even a humanitarian break, leaving as many as two million people stuck in Gaza without border openings. Whatever inhumanity Hamas perpetrated on October 7, Israel has increased it exponentially.
Saturday was a balmy pleasant ay in my DC neighborhood. A friend and I were walking toward a local restaurant when we encountered group of young people who had just come from the Palestinian March to the White House. There were six or seven of them, diverse, a couple of Black folks, a white guy, and two women wearing the keffiyeh, the checkered black and whie scarf that Yasir Arafat wore, a symbol of Palestinian solidarity. Another carried the Palestinian flag, the black, white, green stripes with a red triangle at the left. I asked them how the march went, and they were exuberant. But one woman, then another, then another said harshly, I will never vote for Joe Biden. I voted for him before, and I won’t do it again. What about the alternative, I asked. Would you rather have the Republican alternative. One young woman lowered her head and her voice. “I don’t care,” she said. “Biden has betrayed us.”
Congresswoman Rashida Talib (D-MI) has said much the same thing, accusing President Biden of supporting the genocide of Palestinians. The first Palestinian to serve in Congress, Talib’s principled outspokenness has attracted the ire of her colleagues. Republicans have attempted to censure her for her pro-Palestinian comments. Meanwhile, Palestinians are dying, and our nation’s rabid support of Israel seems to sideline concerns about innocent Palestinian civilians who have been victims of the extreme Israeli response to the Hamas provocation.
President Biden is walking on a tightrope, and his balancing act isn’t’ working well, especially for young Palestinians and other young people of color. He must, and he has, condemn the Hamas attack. But many think he has bent too far backward to mollify Israel while minimizing Palestinian civilian losses. Given who he is, and how he is, he has, perhaps, done his best. But his best is not enough for those who cringe at Israel’s aggression, which did not start with the response to the Hamas October 7 attack. Between 2008 and September 2023, more than 6400 Palestinians were killed by Israelis. You can push people so hard for so long before they respond.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, while necessarily singing from the Biden hymnbook, offers a measured attempt to broker a peace, a cease fire, a time out. His very careful comments are a credit to the Biden-Harris administration, but they aren’t enough to quell the anger that many young people feel about the administration’s failure to call for a cease fire. How many Palestinians must die in hospitals, refugee camps, and in their homes to satisfy Netanyahu’s bloodthirsty quest for revenge?
President Biden beware. Many young people don’t care about all the good you’ve done doesn’t matter when you turn your back on people who are being decimated by the bloodthirsty despot Netanyahu. In the midst of a cordial impromptu sidewalk conversation, I saw an angry determination in the eyes of the young people, who’d driven from New York to participate in the protest on November 4. I will never vote for Biden, one of them said, with an edge to her voice missing from our prior cordial conversation. President Biden, what will you do about that. You need these young people to win in 2024. Don’t ignore them.
Written by Julianne Malveaux
Official website; https://www.juliannemalveaux.com
Don’t Fight for an Autocratic America
The African American should legally resist fighting for an America where over seventy-four million citizens voted for the political autocracy proposing nihilist Donald John Trump. Seventy-four million voters, under the auspices of seeking existential freedoms, wanted to trash the U.S. Constitution in favor of Trump’s proposed nihilist autocracy which sought to enhance and magnify white privilege, and white supremacy globally. “There isn’t a dime worth of difference “between the political philosophies of Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelenskyy,Donald John Trump,Ron DeSantis, and now all of the other republican candidates for the presidency. All of these wealthy nihilist leaders advocate autocratic governments. All of the American heroes who have fought and died in defense of American democracy would turn over in their graves to learn that a large percentage of Americans are willing to consider residing under the rule of an autocrat rather than a duly elected president heading a pluralistic democracy with a capitalist economic based that believes in an unequal distribution of available goods and services based on merit. Merit is defined as usefulness to the republic. As a member of NATO, America has an eclectically conceived developing democratic identity of its own separate and apart from those of eastern and western Europe. Not all of us vacate in Europe to commune with our relatives. The roots of a strong America are not all planted in Europe. America should refine its own democracy to embrace all of its citizens. We need to get in touch with both the metaphysical, and physical aspects of our American being. It is time for America to reify its own commitments to its own citizens when it comes to the African American by clearly showing that African Americans henceforth will, and shall enjoy full benefit of equal protection under the law if it wants to call for the shedding of African American blood in defense of colonizing political ideals of eastern and western Europe.