Accountability has been rare for American politicians my entire life. Oh, sure, if they do illegal things in the wrong way, you might see something happen. You’ll get some corruption charges, and there’s even a decent chance those’ll stick.
But rarely if ever has any of that had anything to do with punishment for abusing their power. Particularly when it comes to foreign policy.
So let’s talk about how you, as an ordinary citizen, actually can try to punish them in a way they care about.
The only meaningful way you punish politicians is to take power away from them.
That’s it. Trump may turn out to be the first meaningful exception ever, and I pray that’s true. But until that’s no longer up in the air, the only meaningful punishment is taking power away.
Conversely, the reward is giving them power.
Punish by taking power; reward by giving power.
Hence, voting.
For you and me, on the street? That’s what we got. If you want to punish a politician, you take power from them. If you want to reward one, you give them power.
It’s very simple, and yet, that’s also where it gets oh so tricky.
There’s a big chunk of the American left still going off on Biden over Israeli actions, with the whole “Genocide Joe” horseshit*, the “no difference” lie – not as bad a lie as “TRUMP WON!!” but still pretty fuckin’ bad for those of us whose lives depend on the outcome of elections – and vowing to withhold their vote and trying to get others to do the same.
So let’s back up a minute and look at the ugly reality on the ground.
Israel is blocking aid all over the place, as everyone knows. Israeli far-right are destroying aid and attacking aid workers, and they’re in Netanyahu’s coalition. It’s bad.
Biden’s pushed back not just verbally but to the point not only of airdrops (I can almost hear the shouts of “MEANINGLESS!!” even as I type this), but in building a pier against Israeli wishes to ship in tons and tons more.
(Cue the shouts of “You mean to land American troops to help the Israelis!” and to pre-empt that, no, and also, fuck off; cue also “bullshit pier broke in a storm, it’s meaningless and already over!” and I note they’re hoping for repairs to be completed in another week, with something like a thousand tons of aid shipped in before it got damaged.)
Do you think Bibi’s government is okay with them doing that that? Seriously? Because they are not okay with the US doing that. That pier existing at all is seen as a violation of Israeli sovereignty even if they’re keeping quiet about it. And some of them were overtly cheering the damage last weekend, hoping it never comes back into operation.
So yeah. They’re mad. And they’re not okay with it.
That’s just aid. Food. Water. Medicine. It’s not even the most meaningful step, in foreign policy terms.
American government public criticism of Israeli tactics has historically been very rare, and by that, I mean, “Israeli forces attacked an American ship and killed American sailors and the response was polite and muted.” (Reagan and Bush I, surprisingly, were exceptions in that “Only Nixon can go to China” way, I suppose.)
Biden, meanwhile, has withheld military equipment (via delay, all he can legally do), has singled out Israeli divisions as ineligible to receive aid due to their actions on the ground (another thing he can legally do to limited degrees, and it’s very new against Israel), has publicly rebuked Israeli actions, has pretty clearly forced what little Netanyahu has begrudgingly allotted for fleeing civilians, and as of last weekend, appeared to be actually getting somewhere pushing that cease fire everyone’s been calling for, all against Bibi’s wishes.
Most of this shit’s new! It really is! These are steps in the right direction.
Yet, I again hear the howls of MEANINGLESS! and NOTHING! But in reality, in terms of diplomatic and foreign affairs dealings with a many-decades key regional ally, this is a lot. It’s a lot as in he’s in real political trouble for even this much.
Biden is sticking out his neck on this. Maybe he has to – I’m sure he’d rather be talking about anything else, honestly. But he’s still doing it.
However, the people who want what he’s doing – and want much, much, much more – are trying to punish him for not already doing that much more.
Now, before we go on, I’ll say this, because it’s important: if his opposition in the upcoming election was someone who would actually do more to stop the war instead of urging the Israelis to do more and worse – including nukes from one particular idiot – this stance would make perfect sense. It would be functional basic politics. It would be smart.
I’ll even go further; if his opposition were merely no worse, it would still make sense. Even if they were slightly worse – but only slightly – it could still make sense, depending upon the situation.
But that’s not where we are. Instead, the reality is that we have an opposition who wants as much more killing as possible, who sends former US ambassadors to write genocidal slogans on bombs to sabotage peace prospects as completely as they can. That’s who we have, and if given power, they will execute on all of it.
Whether you like it or not, in reality, that’s where we are.
And so, in this context, punishing Biden for not doing enough is not smart, and it’s not functional politics.
It is, at best, self-sabotage, because if you punish the politician doing at least some of what you want – by removing them from power – while at the same time you reward the one doing the opposite of what you want – by giving them power – the lesson will not be to do more of what you want, because the power is what they care about.
The lesson will be do less of what you want, or nothing at all.
Or maybe even to decide the opposition was right, and go in with them.
It doesn’t matter what you say about your motives. The hard reality on the ground will be that you punished the ones who leaned your way, and rewarded the ones calling for more killing faster, and you did so in the only way that matters to them: the giving and taking of power.
When a politician takes even the a small step in your direction when their opposition is charging away, do not punish the one leaning towards you, and do not reward the one running away.
Unless, of course, they actually are doing what you really want.
And I gotta tell ya – sometimes, I genuinely wonder.
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* (this term at this point is an instamute from me, just like “shitlib”)
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