EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 2021
Call for ‘Unity’ Is Not Enough: Development Is the New Name of Unity!
Jan. 21 , 2021 (EIRNS)—In her week strategic webcast today, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, commented on her observation of the inauguration of Joe Biden as President of the United States. “I watched the inauguration and his speech, naturally. First of all, I’m not impressed by his artists’ tastes. I thought that Lady Gaga was quite horrible; if you compare the beautiful singing of Marian Anderson of the National Anthem at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961, and Lady Gaga, then you get a sense of what is wrong with the culture.
“Now, let’s say we would give Biden the credit that he means what he said, that he wants to have unity. Well, then I have very good advice for him—he’s a Catholic—then he should read the Encyclical of Pope Paul VI that he wrote in 1967, which was called Populorum Progressio, or On the Development of Peoples, and in which he said that the ‘the new name for peace is development.’ And in the same way, one can say that the ‘new name for unity is development.’ The only way one can hope to have unity inside the United States would be to put on the agenda an economic program which would give productive jobs to every American, which would undo the economic injustices which are, after all, the reason why Trump was elected in 2016, and why all the Trump voters are still sticking to Trump. So, if he wants to have unity, he should make development the new name for unity, and internationally it would go in the same direction. “Now, if he means it seriously, he has to get rid of identity politics. Because, as long as you divide people by their ethnic or sexual or other conviction or distinction, this is polarizing. This is exactly the opposite of what Martin Luther King said, that everything has to be inclusive. Now, let’s see what Biden does, if the reality will show itself very quickly by its deeds and not by the words.
“A lot more could be said, but he’s a new President, so let’s see what will happen. If you look at the team he has selected, well, many of those are from the old Obama Administration; many have come out already agreeing with Pompeo, for example, on the anti-China, anti-Russia stance. Tony Blinken said he agrees with Pompeo on China, so that does not forebode very good. And one cannot forget that the shadow which is hanging over the Biden Administration is exactly what was done in the years of the Trump candidacy in 2016, the four years of Trump’s Presidency when we had Russiagate, we had the Mueller report, we had impeachment 1, impeachment 2; we had the collusion of the heads of intelligence with British intelligence against Trump for this entire period. So that is the heritage, and now, basically, if everybody who voted for Trump is potentially a domestic terrorist—well, if somebody is a white male and voted for Trump, if he is labeled a domestic terrorist, that makes about, at minimum, something like 40 million Americans domestic terrorists—I don’t think that that will work for unity.
“So, I think a lot of things have to be changed and as I said, the only way that Biden could possibly unify the United States, would be to completely break with the policy he has campaigned on in the election campaign—the Green New Deal, because the Green New Deal means that the task to have a productive job for every American is absolutely impossible. So if he doesn’t change policy, which is not likely, obviously, I don’t think any of the words that he said will mean much.
“So, let’s see. My advice to Biden would be to go with encyclical Populorum Progressio, the ‘new name for unity is development.’ ”
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