A Better Day for the Big Country
Nov. 8th, 2020 07:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootAnd a better day for everyone else too.
I don't know much about Joe Biden, though I like his gentle tone of address. The only dismay about a return to the US we know must be its often disastrous foreign policy. If Biden can eschew that, the US return to the Paris Accord and other international efforts towards peace and the planet can only be a good thing, and he may provide reassurance and safety for Northern Irish citizens by protecting the GFA. As to the painful problems of the US, I can imagine they may take a long time to heal. But it has to start somewhere, and this is a beginning.
One of the strongest recommendations for Biden's suitability must be the foaming-cheeked hostility of Nigel Farage and the Daily Express; He hates the UK! Screams the twitter headline. I'm sure he doesn't but if we are going to talk about dodgy foreign policy, the UK's record isn't exactly shining. Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage both long ago put forward a theory about the removal of a bust of Churchill from the Oval Office during Obama's tenure.
"Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British Empire - of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender" - Boris Johnson
"His first day in the White House, he had the bust of Winston Churchill removed from the Oval Office...Because of his grandfather and Kenya and colonialisation (sic), I think Obama has a bit of a grudge against this country" - Nigel Farage
Eye-rolling stuff. Of course Biden's friendship with Obama would make him suspect to men with such notions. Now Johnson's government must try to extricate itself from Trump's fundament to make useful noises at President Elect Biden, and Farage is just a joke again. I hope.
And on the greater stage, Well Done America. We don't know yet if the right man is in. But at least the wrong man is out.
I don't know much about Joe Biden, though I like his gentle tone of address. The only dismay about a return to the US we know must be its often disastrous foreign policy. If Biden can eschew that, the US return to the Paris Accord and other international efforts towards peace and the planet can only be a good thing, and he may provide reassurance and safety for Northern Irish citizens by protecting the GFA. As to the painful problems of the US, I can imagine they may take a long time to heal. But it has to start somewhere, and this is a beginning.
One of the strongest recommendations for Biden's suitability must be the foaming-cheeked hostility of Nigel Farage and the Daily Express; He hates the UK! Screams the twitter headline. I'm sure he doesn't but if we are going to talk about dodgy foreign policy, the UK's record isn't exactly shining. Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage both long ago put forward a theory about the removal of a bust of Churchill from the Oval Office during Obama's tenure.
"Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British Empire - of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender" - Boris Johnson
"His first day in the White House, he had the bust of Winston Churchill removed from the Oval Office...Because of his grandfather and Kenya and colonialisation (sic), I think Obama has a bit of a grudge against this country" - Nigel Farage
Eye-rolling stuff. Of course Biden's friendship with Obama would make him suspect to men with such notions. Now Johnson's government must try to extricate itself from Trump's fundament to make useful noises at President Elect Biden, and Farage is just a joke again. I hope.
And on the greater stage, Well Done America. We don't know yet if the right man is in. But at least the wrong man is out.
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Date: 2020-11-08 01:55 pm (UTC)That, in my humble opinion, is the perfect summation. Or at least one of a number of co-equal possibilities. All of which hold some truth. A quality that's gonna take some getting used to, lol...
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no subject
Date: 2020-11-10 01:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-08 02:16 pm (UTC)(Not that American politics are interesting to anyone outside the U.S., but much has been made here over the past four years over the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and his utter intransigence dealing with the opposing party. McConnell and Biden are actually personal friends—McConnell was the only Senator invited to the funeral of Biden's son, Beau—and I believe that friendship will make the passage of compromise legislation more possible.)
Biden really ought to have run in 2016. I believe he would have won! But Hillary Clinton's minions ousted him. One of many reasons why I did not vote for her.
Cometh the hour Cometh the Man
Date: 2020-11-09 08:35 am (UTC)I don't recall much about the campaigns of 2016, from the outside it seemed obvious that HRC was the not crazy one so how could she lose to someone as overtly ridiculous as Trump? But that was an opinion without economic or political understanding of the time.
Internal US politics may not intrigue the rest of the world but everything changes when it's for the White House, most of us sitting here saying to each other, 'so wait... How does that work again?'