Liberals, conservatives, Biden and differentiating from the neo-fascists

From the beginning, the main political philosophies in the United States have been debated between those who advocate a greater participation of the government in the economy, called liberals, and conservatives, who think of the government as the problem and not the solution, as Ronald Reagan liked to say.

This divide is quite relative, since power groups have always turned to the government to advance their interests, whether within or outside the country. Rather, the dispute focuses on the role of the State in solving domestic social problems, which configures a type of ideology that historically has identified conservatives to the most discriminatory and insensitive attitudes in society.

Under conservative principles, the market must be what regulates the economy, which leads to the reign of globalization of capital to the detriment of national interests. Not even the U.S. was able to escape this trap set by the logic of capital, which only increases as it acts without state regulation. The result has affected greatly the working middle class — who sustains the political system. Donald Trump was the result of this crisis and tried to use it, by exalting chauvinism, racism and xenophobia, which increased the social schism and political polarization of the country.

It was encouraging to see that despite the large number of people Trump mobilized around his possible re-election an even greater number of Americans spoke out against him and halted a process with incalculable consequences for the country and the rest of the world. But Trumpism is not dead, much less the ultra-conservative tendencies that grew out of his administration.

Since his refusal to accept defeat with actions that dynamited the democratic image of the United States, Trump has reappeared as czar of the Republican Party, and favored for the same economic reasons that brought him to power — a fundamentalist political base that even assumes a religious tendency to justify itself, the demographic characteristics of the country, the control of local structures in certain regions, as well as the support of large moneyed interests, linked to the conservative movement.

It cannot be said that the victory of the Democrats was due to the charisma of their candidate; they voted against Trump and the ultra-conservative ideology, which explains why Biden has been able to direct a very liberal agenda of internal reforms. He has also expressed the advancement of the most progressive tendencies within the party and their importance for the next election.

Many analysts compare initiatives by the Biden administration to a kind of FDR New Deal of the 1930s. It is a return to the more orthodox ideas of liberalism after four decades of dominance by conservatives in administering the North American state. But, so far, Biden’s New Deal does not seem to be accompanied by the Good Neighbor policy that Roosevelt projected during the crisis, nor his views of the postwar world.

Biden is a man of the cold war and his understanding of American foreign policy is stagnant in the division of the world by zones of domination, a legacy of colonialism with other labels, as well as the creation of enemies that facilitate the constant arms race in benefit of the country’s military industrial complex. The deterioration of the hegemony of the United States, faced with the reality of a world in transformation, is the great dilemma that the U.S. faces, no matter their ideological matrix.

A progressive look inward does not guarantee a positive evolution of U.S. foreign policy. However, life has shown that they cannot be separated. At least in the post-world war, it has been a recurring phenomenon that interventionism acts as the base for domestic social reforms, and the reason is economic. The coherence of the discourse also matters. For progressive Democrats, American foreign policy ends up being unpresentable when it allies with the most reactionary governments and sectors of the Third World.

Focused on their domestic political interests, where long-cherished goals are advocated, progressive Democrats have avoided contradictions with the administration on foreign policy issues, but such a balance is not tenable indefinitely. The initial conflicts can be seen in their attitude in the face of the Israeli massacres against the Palestinians, and other points of disagreement will surely deepen, among them the issue of relations with Cuba, which enjoys appreciable interest within these sectors.

In the case of Cuba, the most conservative officials of the Biden administration have acted under the premise of avoiding conflicts with anti-Cuban sectors in Congress, especially with Democratic Senator Bob Menéndez, who blackmails them with his vote, that can be decisive in advancing other issues on the presidential agenda. But this entails betraying other party groups that supported Biden, among other things, on the understanding that he would modify Cuba policy as he said during the campaign. Around 500 Democratic activists reminded him in a recent open letter, as did 80 members of congress, and other legal and political initiatives are already underway.

Placed at the antipodes of the North American political spectrum, the Cuban issue is another of the ingredients that define the line of demarcation of the prevailing political tendencies in that country. If Biden wants to differentiate himself from the neo-fascists, he cannot have the same policy as Donald Trump towards Cuba. Herein lies the priority of the matter.