Mornin’ Politocadoes!
President Joe BIden is to hold a two-day virtual summit to reverse the ongoing “recession” of democracy and the rising authoritarianis around the world. Leaders and policy experts from around 110 countries are expected to participate, engaging in ideas on how to fight corruption and promoting human rights. Notably absent, as they were not invited, are China and Russia. The two countries wrote a joint essay claiming it is in fact the US that is exhibiting a “Cold War mentality” to “stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world.”
China’s officials had more thoughts to offer on the summit snub.
“The U.S. side claims that its so-called democracy summit is to defend democracy, then I can’t help asking with the most abundant and advanced medical resources and technology, how could the U.S. allow more than 800,000 of its people to die from the virus and leave nearly 50 million people suffering the COVID still?” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said this week. “With such human rights tragedies, how can the U.S. defend democracy?”
Taiwan was invited, so you can see why China’s a bit miffed.
Biden plans to call on attendees to fight the recession of democracy and to make sure that their democracies “deliver for their people.”
Yet, one can’t help but feel a bit peevish when something like this happens. Biden’s expected to speak out on the harsh voting restrictions put in place in many parts of the US which is good. He’s using the Bully Bulpit as he should but it comes off as a little toothless to rally against anti-democratic measures worldwide, when you, the leader of a country with your party in power of all three branches of government, are unable to do anything about it in your own country.
And it’s all well and good to speak out against it. But what measures are being taken? Are we going to move forward with regulation of social media platforms like Facebook, which are a driver of authoritarian political views? How do we make an example of those who would subvert democracy if they feel no meaningful consequence? How does he propose to tackle the voting rights restrictions going into effect around the US? How do we make poll workers and local school board officials feel safe when anti-democratic loons are specifically targeting them? I suppose we’ll see. I don’t doubt that these are things that they’ve stressed over the past year.
When Biden first took office, he was taking calls from other world leaders offering him their congratulations, he would say “America is back!” to which many leaders reportedly said something to the effect of “Yes, but for how long?”. And that really is the question, in this era where every avenue available to ameliorating the US situation seems to be cut off at choke points, its very hard to deliver on that promise.
I don’t mean to be pessimistic about this, so I will say that I’m glad we have a fundamentally decent person in power. He’s fighting for a better, more normal world and not actively making it a gross, worse place. I just hope that more comes of this than just putting a thumb in the eye of Putin, Xi, and Victor Orban. Victory starts at home, someone once said. Let’s hope we can get it sorted.
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