The Electoral Value Of The Oppressed - Biden's Milking Of Victimhood For All It's Worth

'There are simply not enough, Mr. President’, said one of his closest advisors, referring to people of color, LGBTQ+, and Mexicans. 'The numbers don't add up'.

Yet the President was running on a platform of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and he knew absolutely that his commitment to the oppressed would bring them out of the woodwork in droves. How could any one of them turn their backs on his generosity, the open border that let Mami and Papi in, the billions in social welfare perks for the ghetto, ridding America of the white man and placing the black man on his rightful place atop the social ladder? 

Oppression politics, as his opponents called it, was not just an electoral gambit, but a deep-seated, righteous policy; and if it was a zero-sum game, so be it.  It was about time that the pendulum be reset, that the black, brown, and mulatto millions rise up while the discredited white man consigned to the margins, dismissed, and ignored.

All of this had stuck in the President's craw when he first took office.  He had been distinctly proud of his white heritage despite his lace-curtain, shanty Irish background.  It didn't matter that most of his ancestors had never made it out of a watery, thatched roof peasantry.  It was whiteness that counted, the legacy of Louis XIV, the Hapsburgs, Romanovs, Plantagenets and Tudors, some of whose glory must have dripped and seeped his way.

 

European civilization was responsible for the greatness of th human race, and no cant or febrile progressive hysteria could change it; yet here he was running on just that platform.  Every time he went to the podium to limn the praises of the oppressed he couldn't help thinking of limp tacos, collard greens, and cotton fields.  He had tried for his almost four years in office to rid himself of these awful, hateful, racist thoughts, but there they were, hardwired, set in concrete, unassailable. 

No one noticed - not because of his rambling anecdotes about boyhood summers on Rehoboth beaches, or stories about this grandmother's fondness for rum cake - but because the power of assumption, suspension of disbelief, and the downright credulousness of the electorate were all working in his favor.  Thanks to his shills in Congress, and the drumbeat of the media, the country was well attuned to issues of diversity, oppression, and exclusion.  He, as leader of the country, could only be a man of sincere progressive belief.

Ah, those were the days, he dreamed.  The Hall of Mirrors, the palace gardens, the elegant men and women dancing in the great ballroom of the palace of Versailles or listening to Newton at Kings College, Cambridge or studying with Hardy, or tea with Nicholas II of Russia.  

'Snap out of it, dear', said his wife when she saw that unmistakable smile of reverie. 'There's work to be done'.  Now, Jill, with no better pedigree that the President, shared most of his reverence for the European past - and even extended her monarchist leanings to the shahs of Iran, Ashoka and the Maurya emperors.  It wasn't so much whiteness, but Caucasian-ness, but the principle was the same. 

The country might do well with some of this kind of diversity - kings, queens, and courtiers would be good things to flavor the salad of low-hanging fruit - but the President and his campaign staff could not let up race, gender, and ethnicity; and must keep banging on how Donald Trump had upset the applecart during his four years, and it took a Biden presidency to put them all back in and...

Here the President shook his head to get rid of the vision of Shecky and Abe pushing a rag cart through the Lower East Side, Jews who sewed a few rags together and made a dress and then bought up the entire West Side, moved to Hollywood, and became rich.  Not quite his Europeans, but white and enterprising nonetheless so due must be given. 

 

'We must never forget the travails of our black brothers and sisters', the President read from a prepared speech, 'for they have given us the wealth of nations.  Out of the forests and savannahs of Africa they came in chains to be finally freed in this great land of ours, this land of limitless opportunity....'

Here the President paused.  This was not right.  'Opportunity', 'great land' did not belong here.  The message was suffering, oppression, indignity, the zero-sum game of white supremacy and black enslavement.  Yet, he knew he was a bad ad-libber and hesitated to go off message, so he finished this neo-conservative speech and fired the speechwriter, a Republican plant, a mole, a traitor; but the deed was done, and the press quickly took up 'the President's newfound conservatism'. 

His inner circle closed around him and insisted that he go back on the stump and renew his core message of oppression.  This is what we are all about, sang the chorus; and so the President with renewed energy returned to form and hammered on about the black man, the abused woman, the homeless refugee, and the rightness of the gender spectrum. 

'Donald Trump will take away all our generosity, our compassion, our heartfelt embrace of democracy and the place of everyone within it...', and again he paused, thinking of the fright-wigged Viking-horned Mardi Gras crewe of revelers who stormed the Capitol, gave those buggers something to think about, no insurrection this but a bawdy group of frat boys and backwoods crackers with nothing to do on a Friday night. 

 

He shook his head again, got rid of the fog and cobwebs and returned to his fulminating speech.  'Pregnant pauses', commented his supporters, 'lapses' said his critics; but his coterie knew that as long as the message of the oppressed rang loud and clear, he would remain in the Oval Office. 

Unfortunately the only voters listening to the President's harangues were members of the choir - the white, liberal true believers who believed every word that came out of their President's mouth.  As for the so-called 'oppressed', they were having none of it.  Black enterprise, visibility, and opportunity were increasing, no thanks to his demeaning positions on affirmative action and 'diversity'.  Wetback labor was putting pressure on the legitimate, long-standing Latino community; putting ugly transgender women in the West Wing did a disservice to drag queen beauty; and prices of gas, fatback, and prepared enchiladas were rising. 

So oppression politics aside, Joe Biden is likely to be out of work come next January.  The time of wheedling, hectoring, race-bating, divisive politics will be over.  The King Is Dead, Long Live The King....but this time, the palace will be a very, very different place indeed.