Thread by @GlumBird

Biden's political project is to attempt to not resolve any contradiction in any direction for as long as he can. A hollowed out interregnum, with continuously escalating police, far-right and imperialist violence and no vision but the grey of quietly stated margins.

The violence of US imperialism - even its fascist "excesses" - will continue unabated. Its police departments will riot when they please. Fascist terrorism is already normalised to the point of being an electoral stance capable of winning around half the electorate.

What remains is a split bourgeoisie atop a decaying empire that has no route to stop its fall. Trump forced confrontations over these contradictions; Biden's entire job is to prevent "embarrasment" - that is to find what bourgeois unity can be built among the blood of decay.

The nature of collapse is the increasing failure of capitalist structures to fulfill their social function. At present, this has produced atrophy and a corresponding failure of bourgeois political projects.

There is no way out of the collapse but socialism.

All modes of production are social expressions of humanity's fundamental struggle to produce and reproduce itself as an alienated part of nature. This one is failing on everything, to the extent it is obliterating the conditions which allow that struggle to take place at all.

Capital is neither Red nor Blue; Blue and Red are strands of capital.

Now, before we get too ahead of ourselves on combating Biden, we need to understand that the contradiction that Trump expressed has actually deepened. This is most evident in his slow burning attempts to either simulate or do a coup.

https://twitter.com/GlumBird/status/1324725512804204547

As @luke_meeham and I discussed on Friday in an election podcast episode I'll get up tomorrow, the possibilities of this succeeding are very slim. Something new has been revealed of Trump's base - that is, to use Luke's words, "bigger and less scary".

This is to say we haven't seen the kind of violence one would expect from Trump's lot, whilst at the same time they are much bigger than you would expect. I don't rule out Trump managing to pull this off as yet, but this does suggest he probably won't.

However, this does mean that "Trumpism" is here to stay. Whilst I think the notion that Trump has completely transformed the Republicans is a little overstated, he certainly holds broad hegemony over them.

As such, the political force which the Democrats will be contesting is that of a broadly "Trumpist" Republican Party. Biden is not going to be able to wield executive powers as brazenly as Trump because this would undermine what he is meant to represent to the bourgeoisie.

This leaves the results, assuming Biden has secured the Presidency and Trump fails in his maybe-maybe not coup, as one in which the Biden admin will *always* be wrestling with Trumpism. The split in the bourgeoisie is entrenched. Hence why his role is to avoid resolving things.

Biden is a vile imperialist and this needs to be stated plainly. His pursuits are going to be violent and disgusting. In addition, where he appears to offer a different route to Trump, he won't be (a) brazen or (b) politically dominant enough in the House or Senate to do it.

Political contradictions and forces don't disappear because of electoral defeat. They adapt, change and work within the new terrain of their contradictions. Liberalism fundamentally *does not* conceive of this any longer, so the "struggle" they put up is going to be pathetic.

TL;DR: Elections are a way of giving approval to of bourgeois political projects. This one failed to perform that function, deepening a rift that has been brewing for decades. Biden isn't going to be so much an administration as the public face of an internal fight.

TL;DR 2: The Unites States is presently an ostrich, head in quick sand, waving an assault rifle around in its hands, trigger permanently held down, preying it keeps missing itself.