President Biden, whose career in the Senate and as Vice-President was that of a centrist politician whom most would not consider to be a particularly bold politician, may well turn out to be President of enormous historical relevance.
But crisis and circumstances make great Presidents when they rise to the occasion. Think Lincoln with the Civil War or FDR with an economic collapse and World War II.
In 2021, Biden inherits a world with monumental problems. The pandemic which has brought the world economy to its knees, a climate crisis that yields parts of one large US state (California) uninhabitable for a number of months each year, income inequality and a wealth gap of historical proportions… all while the billionaire class has seen their wealth expand massively during the pandemic thanks to a rising stock market fueled by near zero interest rates which have been required to keep the banking system from collapse… massive debt at the Federal and State levels, a crumbling infrastructure, a political divide including right-wing extremism that threatens the foundations of democracy as seen on January 6th 2021 with the deadly pro-Trump terrorists attempting to violently try to stop Congress from certifying the election results.
The problem of right wing extremism is massive now and no longer just on the fringes. The problem has long existed in the US since the Civil War in various groups such as the KKK, the Black Legion, the Minutemen, the John Birch Society, the American Nazi Party and many other lesser known names. These extremists have been around a long time and their gripes have always been remarkably consistent over the years.
But, with the advent of social media, an ex-President who welcomed these groups into his base, and a powerful right wing media bubble on cable TV (with Fox and Newsmax) and on radio with hundreds of AM radio stations across the country broadcasting divisiveness and lies such as the thoroughly discredited notion that there was massive election fraud in 2020 …the task of tamping down the radicalization of those being propagandized by the right wing bubble is a large hill to climb. Probably one that will require legislation like we see in the UK, which caused Fox News to cease broadcasting in that country.
Still a large of the US population refuses to accept the simple, scientifically proven fact that face masks can significantly help slowdown highly contagious airborne viruses or… that the Covid 19 pandemic is real …or that climate change is real …or that the most secure election in US history that produced a winner with a 7 million vote plurality with no evidence of fraud could somehow be fraudulent. There is a lot of work to do to bring the manipulated to their senses and it will take years. Don’t expect ‘unity’ anytime soon with these folks.
President Biden will face an enormous task ahead in 2021 and beyond. This decent man has the opportunity to be thrust into the category of historically consequential Presidents and we wish him well for all of our sakes.