Biden was sworn in as the 46^th president of the United States this week. The days leading to this inauguration have been the most polarized in the recent US history. The main reason being the divide that was caused by the astounding victory of the last resident of the White House – Donald Trump. Media for its part, fueled the crazy theory that Trump wouldn’t allow for peaceful transition – quite ridiculous if you ask me.

The nation was and is still divided. Trump managed to get over 74 mil votes even in this pandemic battered economy and the unprecedented number of covid-19 cases. I think, minus the pandemic, Trump would have strolled right back into the White House for his second term. The fact that he managed to get the most votes ever and still lose to Biden stands testament to how popular he is in his voter base. But now that’s history. Trump was a disruptor, and he did his part to bring out in public how fragile the world’s most powerful democracy is, how wide the gulf is between the left & the right, the race divide, the class divide. Infact, most democracies today are not as resilient as they used to be. There are many new power centers that affect govt formations, unlike the past. Social media is one such power center. It’s been infested with the plague of fake news, paid trends, planted agendas. And the most distressing trend is the absolute authority that the platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Google have is shutting down voices that do not comply with their set ‘woke’ rules. Donald Trump, is not what I would call a very responsible user of social media, but to take away his right to communicate to his supporters was an assault on FOS. No platform should have right to decide what is ok and what is not. That has to be decided in the court room. Platforms should not be allowed ‘self-governance’, unless they take complete responsibility of all the content. They can’t have it both ways, where they flipflop between being a platform and content moderators. Platforms banning and thus cutting off politicians’ ability to directly communicate with his supporters and in this case at a very critical time, is a worrying sign. 

The traditional media both print and media, have been known to have set agendas, biases, political leanings. And hence can’t and should never be trusted to tell the news without a bias.

Coming back to Biden, I hope he does not take Obama as his role model. But I fear that he will always be compared to him. From what little I have seen of Biden, he does not seem to be the one who takes reins. He is of the type – wait and watch until it blows over. He started by shedding a few tears when he bid adieu to his hometown. At the inauguration, he made a speech calling for unity and made all the politically correct noises of how he will bring all Americans together and yet straightway issued a slew of executive orders reversing most of Trumps decision. He definitely didn’t have to decide on things like WHO, Paris Climate Accord, immigration on day one. A seasoned leader would have made these decisions, say a week or 2 later when all the hype has died down. If you want to unite, you don’t antagonize half of the folks who didn’t vote for you on day 1.

I fear, Biden will end up trying to ‘fix’ stuff for the next 4 years. I think it would in his interest to stay away from ‘Trump topics’. He should also keep equally away from ‘Obama topics’ – No way in hell can he compete with Obama, the most liked President in recent history, who also happens to be black. He should rather chart his own path. Identify a few big-ticket items and put his stamp on it. All these fixing of Trump topics should be done in a way that does not bring a lot of attention. People are people – and they are same everywhere. Show them the big items and they will focus on those. Tag these items as Biden items and people will remember. Fight reelection on these items. Try not to be held hostage to the Liberals, the Wokes, do things for the Right, to reassure that their concerns will to be looked into – And to someone with half a century of political experience, surely this would not be rocket science.