Biden's Agony = Teaching-Tale on Hierarchy

by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

What if we looked at the Biden agony as a real-life allegory about the failure of Hierarchy as a way of understanding the world?

It has all the marks of a teaching story. At the very moment when the Supreme Court is trying to turn our President into more than a king — a tyrant, a despot — the real-life President is faltering badly in the presidential skill of communication. So badly that many Americans want him to withdraw his candidacy.

And when is this happening? Around July 4, the date when Americans most recall throwing off the constraints of hierarchic kingship.

Biden’s stubbornness is a taste of how hard it is for Americans as a whole to abandon Hierarchy as a world-model and move to an Ecological model instead — with all species and all cultures and all citizens and all immigrants affecting each other.

So what can we learn from this real-life allegory? We can learn to take power back into the arms and legs and breaths and bellies of what Carl Sandburg called The People, Yes.

Some analysts are saying this week is crucial for whether the momentum to re-empower ourselves, The People, works. So here is how to embody our power, right now:

Make five copies of this letter. Send one to an elected official you think is honest and responsible — your Senator, or Governor, or House Congressperson, or state legislator. Add your endorsement of one or another approach President Biden could take: continue as is, or withdraw his candidacy, or resign the Presidency.

Send the other copies to four of your friends or colleagues you respect. Add a brief note asking each to do the same with five copies.

You can be decently proud. You did your part.

Thank you, and blessings of shalom!
— Arthur
(Rabbi Arthur Waskow)

Presidential seal on lectern (US government photo)