To say that 2024 has commenced under the shadow of a host of daunting societal challenges is an understatement.
Across the globe, the enormous strains and stresses placed on our finite planet by a rapidly growing population of 8 billion-plus humans — most of them hoping to lead some approximation of a comfortable modern life — are evident.
Meanwhile, in a related development, brutal wars over the control of land and resources rage in several regions.
Now add to this the sobering rise in repressive, autocratic governments, yawning and persistent economic gaps, the stresses that have accompanied the arrival of a hyper-connected online society, the lingering effects of the pandemic, and the fact that the populations of most so-called “First World” nations are aging rapidly, and it’s little surprise that so many people bear a sense of unease – and even pessimism and cynicism — about the year to come and those that will follow.
Donald Trump and his “MAGA” movement have long made egging on these feelings of worry and gloom their go-to political strategy. Whether wooing aging white Americans fearful of the nation’s shifting demographics or helping to further alienate young people feeling overwhelmed by rapid economic change, Trump is only too happy to tell you that things are going to hell and that the situation can only be addressed if the nation vests someone — namely, him — with the kinds of powers enjoyed by his pals Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
One older American, however, who remains stubbornly and inspiringly immune to the plagues of pessimism and cynicism, as well as the lure of autocracy, is President Joe Biden. To his enormous and everlasting credit, Biden — at an age at which most people spend more and more time contemplating the past and their own mortality, and in a position in which the temptation to seize power is intoxicating — continues to keep his eyes firmly fixed on the future and the vital importance of truly representative democratic government in making it brighter.
And this is not just a matter of style or rhetoric. Throughout the first 1,000-plus days of his presidency, Biden has consistently pursued a policy agenda premised on the idea that both the present and future can be better if we come together to embrace intentional public solutions and build a government that truly reflects our increasingly diverse population.
The list of accomplishments in these realms is long and impressive — especially for a chief executive so frequently hemmed in by a badly divided Congress for which gridlock is its default state. It includes:
- Overcoming and triumphing over an unprecedented health pandemic
- Leading a sustained economic recovery of record proportions
- Restoring the nation’s position as a respected global leader
- Enabling and presiding over record enrollment in affordable healthcare coverage
- Aggressively tackling the global climate emergency and launching a massive update of the nation’s infrastructure
- Empowering an array of federal agencies to protect American workers and consumers, while restraining the power of predatory corporate interests
- Selecting, by far, the most diverse — both with respect to race and gender — collection of administration officials and federal judges in American history
Has the Biden presidency been perfect? Of course not. Like every president before him, Biden has made mistakes.
The decision to tear off the bandage in the departure from Afghanistan, though clearly long overdue, could likely have been handled better.
He’s also struggled at times, despite best efforts, to control events and phenomena — the war in Gaza, inflation, student loan debt, immigration, assaults on reproductive freedom — that have caused significant harm.
One wishes he could be even more aggressive in his efforts to combat the environmental crisis.
That said, the nation still awaits a coherent and detailed articulation of how any of these matters could have been handled better in the present political environment — and in particular, how turning back the clock to the 1950s and undermining democracy would do the trick.
As veteran journalist Hugh Jackson of the Nevada Current observed in an excellent recent column entitled “Think food is pricey? Wait’ll you see what authoritarianism costs.”:
“A lot of problems need to be addressed. And those problems can be addressed in a lot of competing but more or less viable ways so as to enhance prosperity, opportunity and rights, and help people shape and fulfill aspirations. Some people are fond of describing that contest between competing visions as the marketplace of ideas.
In that marketplace, anti-democratic authoritarianism shouldn’t even be on the shelf. If voters do surrender to the autocrat, that marketplace will be shut down.”
In short, yes — the world of 2024 is fraught and filled with formidable and frightening challenges. But the notion that we can successfully tackle those challenges by abandoning our commitment to intentional public solutions and shared sacrifice and/or representative government remains absurd. Thank goodness the United States has a president who understands this.
NC Newsline Editor Rob Schofield oversees day-to-day newsroom operations, authors regular commentaries, and hosts a weekly radio show/podcast. Republished from ncnewsline.com.
