Out of the flood of basically uninteresting commentary about Biden dropping out of the presidential race (and effectively resigning as president) sticks Curtis Yarvin’s article. The latter pointed out that the manner in which the coup was carried out is typical of corrupt dictatorships in Africa or Latin America and would have been unthinkable anywhere in the West just a few decades ago.
The most powerful man on the planet goes off to his private retreat, and then there is an article in the press saying that he has resigned. Is Biden the author of the published text? Almost certainly not. Did he sign it? We don’t know. If so, did he understand what he was signing? Maybe he did. Is he still alive? Maybe he is, but it’s not entirely certain. Is he under house arrest? We don’t know.
What we do know is that he didn’t want to resign and that some governors from his political party have come out in support of him.
The fascinating thing is, no one’s concerned. Nobody finds it strange. It’s just a feature of the regime.
If Vladimir Putin went on a dacha and then TASR (or whatever their agency is called now) published a letter announcing his resignation, there would be immediate question marks and speculation. Perhaps a militia would start forming somewhere in support of Tsar Vladimir. Disappearing leaders is not part of their political culture. America’s does. This is not to say anything positive about the Russian political system, only to say that the American one has degenerated into an even worse form.
Curtis Yarvin also reminds us that it doesn’t have to take the form of a hard clash. Joe Biden has never been a fighter. He is a schemer used to doing what is expected of him. He’s been trained to do that all his life and that’s why he was chosen for the job. If he is faced with pressure, it is perfectly natural for him to cave in. Formally, we have a political system based on personality being in charge. But in reality we have a political system incapable of creating personalities. That cannot work. Or rather, it works somehow. But in a very different way from what the textbooks and constitutional documents say.
By the way, if the prime minister disappeared from some Baltic parody of a state and a resignation letter appeared on the web, would anyone address it?