What Joe Biden's America Would Look Like In 2021

It is now November 2021, one year after Joe Biden was elected president after a razor-thin election. We have been given a glimpse into the future to see Biden’s America.

Summer 2021 was another scorcher. The rolling brownouts California suffered in 2020 spread throughout the West. Record demand for air conditioning combined with the ongoing closures of coal, nuclear, and even gas-powered electric plants have left millions powerless in these heat waves.

Energy Secretary Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with the support of President Biden, has permanently extended the airlines’ drastic curtailments of flights, first seen during the late pandemic, in keeping with the Green New Deal they both support. Taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel have shot up to European levels “to discourage internal combustion engine use and to promote jobs in the alternative transportation industry, especially the manufacture of bicycles.”

The Ferguson effect, where law enforcement pulls back in the wake of hostility, lawsuits, and violent crime increases, and seen in 2020 in certain cities such as Seattle, Portland, Chicago, and Minneapolis, has extended to hundreds of major cities. Attorney General Lori Lightfoot, former mayor of Chicago, has called for a blue-ribbon commission on how to best spend the mandatory 30% diversion of police funds to social service agencies that the Democratic U.S. House and Senate mandated. Although Biden said during the 2020 campaign that he did not support defunding the police, he never denounced violence and rioting in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests. This was seen as a green light by progressives in Congress to divert money from law enforcement nationally, or else state and local governments would lose federal funding.

Because Biden has been making fewer and fewer public appearances, his ability to impose his will on Congress has diminished. Rumors have circulated, but his advisers remain tight-lipped about his medical and mental condition.

The economy has never recovered from what was hoped to be a temporary pullback during the pandemic. Even liberal experts agree with conservatives that the reversal of President Trump's tax cuts by the new Congress did serious damage to economic investment and job growth. The difference between the two camps, though, is that liberal economists see a benefit to the lower standards of living. According to Treasury Secretary Elizabeth Warren, “When everyone’s income goes down, as long as the income of those who are wealthier go down more, the result is more equality.”

Identity politics has expanded. Vice President Kamala Harris, who was chosen by Biden because she checked three boxes as a progressive woman of color, was designated by him as the czar in charge of “remedying historical grievances.” The 1619 Project, claiming that America was founded to promote slavery and first pushed by the New York Times, has been adopted as mandatory reading by the majority of public school districts in the country. This was after a guidance letter went out from her office to school districts nationwide, telling them to incorporate the 1619 Project or face liability exposure on civil rights grounds. The fact that the 1619 Project is opposed by liberal and conservative historians alike, and also ignores the abolition movement, are not considered significant by the Biden administration.

In foreign affairs, Biden has attempted to resurrect the Obama-era agreement with Iran to keep it from developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Reversing all the Trump sanctions as a unilateral peace gesture to the regime did not work — Iran has ramped up its 20,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges, which mostly had been in storage prior to the election.

National security adviser Adam Schiff has stated publicly that “Iran must curtail its nuclear efforts or face the consequences.” But when pressed, he could not say what those consequences would be. He said he hoped that discussions with the European Union, Russia, and China about how to deal with the Iranian crisis would find common ground for the first time.

The new Democratic Congress has cut funding to the Department of Defense under pressure from the newly empowered progressive wing of the Democratic Party. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have been reacting to the painful cuts by triaging their defense priorities. Adversaries have shown signs of challenging U.S. interests abroad to exploit new weaknesses in American forces.

The one bright spot in Biden’s America over the last 12 months has been in healthcare. When the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed led to a vaccine in record time, Americans, for the most part, decided they were tired of seclusion and took the vaccine. Even Democratic governors lifted Coronavirus restrictions, employees went back to work, schools and universities reopened for the spring semester, sports teams played in front of fans, and the atmosphere of fear went away. Defeating the pandemic is now acknowledged by pundits on both ends of the spectrum as Trump’s finest hour. The vaccine came out two weeks after the November election.