Biden Time from the Sunken Place

Image Source: Screenshot from the movie Get Out

In Jordan Peele’s wickedly satiric horror flick, Get Out, a white woman seduces Black men to bring home to her family, where they are hypnotized to prepare them to have a white person’s brain implanted in their own. The hypnosis takes them to the “sunken place,” where their personality is submerged below that of the white person they are hosting.

Adding irony, the evil white family plays the part of good liberals. “And by the way, I would’ve voted for Obama a third term if I could’ve. Best president in my lifetime. Hands down,” the father tells the Black boyfriend upon meeting him.

Like a good liberal, I voted for Biden in 2020. The thought of four more years of the criminally insane Orange Monster was a bridge too far.

But lately I’ve been thinking of the “sunken place” when I think of our current president. It’s not that he’s betrayed us – because anyone with half a brain (pun intended) knew from the start that his campaign “promises” were the usual hollow nothingness.

Still, the rampage of recklessness and destruction he is on is nothing short of breathtaking. His administration ignores any calls for negotiations with Russia over Ukraine unless they withdraw, knowing full well they will not. Daily the danger of utter catastrophe looms larger; how will Russia respond when NATO-supplied, Ukraine-flown MIGs engage in the conflict? Will Putin start dropping bombs on Warsaw? At what point will he be tempted to break out the “tactical” nukes? And what happens after any of those things – or things I’m not thinking of – happen?

Meanwhile in the “homeland,” Biden has greenlit the “carbon bomb,” drilling for oil in the vast but shrinking Alaskan wilderness – a mammoth project that has been held back by every administration until that of the white-haired, half-brained servant of dirty industry, Joe Biden. Well now, I guess he’s in his own sunken place.

Missiles for Ukraine, bombs for Syria and Yemen, bombs for us, too.

For immigrants? Back into detention centers. To paraphrase Ralph Nader, there’s not even a dime’s worth of difference between Trump and Biden anymore. Maybe a penny if we’re lucky.

And we, the people? Among my white, good liberal friends, I’m still expected to keep my mouth shut, pretend that none of this is happening, and get ready to vote for Biden for a second term, if not a third.

I’m looking up from the sunken place. Maybe we all are.

Fred Baumgarten is a writer living in western Massachusetts.