It doesn’t matter that Biden is old. It matters that he’s supporting a genocide.

The choice between Trump and Biden will be no choice at all for people of conscience. Age and “political purity” have nothing to do with it.

This piece is republished from Emily Mills’ newsletter, Grist From The Mills.

On the day I’m writing this, the sun is out and the temperature’s—early March in Wisconsin, and this is Not At All Normal—hit 70 degrees. Despite some high winds, I made sure to get out on my bike and ride down to our local indie bookstore, A Room of One’s Own, for a letter writing event. The store provided letters calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the end of U.S. military aid to Israel, among other things, and we signed and addressed them to President Joe Biden, Senators Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson, and Rep. Mark Pocan. (You can and should do this, too.)

In the face of seemingly unrelenting horrors and the stubborn, inhumane insistence of my country not to use its very real power to end the genocide of the Palestianian people, writing letters feels like a very small thing. But it’s something. And everything counts, especially as a means of combating the kind of despair that is both a completely understandable reaction to current events and exactly what the enemies of justice want us to fall into. Because it means inaction. 

I was heartened to see such a strong turnout of people from my community at the letter writing event. If nothing else, the feeling it gave me to be part of that loving community will help fuel me on to be a better member of that community in the future. It’s the kind of thing that sustains us for the long-haul, and the fight for justice and peace is a very long one indeed.

It’s with that small but vital boost of hope that I’m sitting down now to write the essay I wanted to tackle earlier this week, when I came across a March 1 op-ed from Cap Times publisher Paul Fanlund. I am somewhat frequently at odds with the ostensibly progressive publisher’s opinions, as they too often fall into what seems to me like a dangerous, self-righteous sort of centrism that tends to downplay, ridicule, and/or ignore very real concerns raised by those of us who aren’t straight, cis white men living comfortably middle class lives. In this case, I have very mixed reactions, but I think both are important.

Fanlund wrote about the very real and very problematic obsession that mainstream media has with the age of our two presumptive presidential candidates. The long and short of it, as far as I can tell, is that Paul agrees that there is a lopsided focus on Biden’s age and perceived “senior moments,” versus Trump, who is nearly as old and has plenty of “senior moments” himself, in addition to several civil and criminal indictments and convictions, not-so-secret ties to shady foreign leaders, and, you know, an insurrection under his belt.

Honestly, I agree. Mainstream media like The New York Times and CNN have fallen right back into old habits of horse-race-style coverage of the election, with a weird hyper-focus on what they perceive to be Biden’s age-related gaffes. It is a problem that the media consumed by the majority of people in the U.S. doesn’t seem to be capable of treating Trump’s candidacy like the democracy-threatening rise of Christofascism that it is.  

It’s also true that the particular age-related concerns currently being discussed on national platforms are largely 1) ageist, and 2) the wrong fucking questions and concerns in the first place.

Do I have questions about whether or not someone who is not likely to live another decade will meaningfully understand the present and future needs of a country facing down the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, growing income inequality, housing insecurity, and runaway tech? Absolutely yes. Does it mean that it’s impossible for someone at that age to tackle those issues? Absolutely not. But mainstream media seems largely uninterested in even asking Biden (or Trump) about them, or taking his administration to task for where it is falling far short on each and every one of those issues (and more).

Crucially, though, the age of the candidates is perhaps the least pressing issue about this election. 

Where the other half of my mixed reaction comes into play, though, is where Fanlund brushes aside any other concerns about Biden, writing, “Were Biden younger, one suspects he would still be under fire from some on the far left who prioritize political purity over actually winning elections.”

Is it “political purity” to want a president who isn’t actively supporting genocide and the apartheid regime behind it? Is it “political purity” to want a president who isn’t touting being “tough but fair” at the border (i.e. creating yet more punitive and carceral policies for dealing with immigration, while failing to meaningfully address the violent, racist, secessionist actions of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, among others)? Is it “political purity” to expect our elected leaders to take reproductive freedoms seriously and not just as a sometimes convenient tool to get reelected?

I could go on, but I hope you get my point.

Yes, there are people on the far left with me who are pretty shitty about expecting everyone to think and act in exactly the way they deem to be politically pure and righteous. The same goes for the center and the right. For those of us on the left, however, I’d argue (strongly) that there is no comparison between obnoxious if well-meaning lefties and those in the center who treat “identity politics” as a fun thought experiment and those on the right-wing who literally don’t believe everyone deserves the same rights and dignity as them, and that me and mine are not quite human.

Further, my opposition to Biden (and the opposition of a growing coalition of those who would otherwise vote Democratic, including 100,000 “uncommitted” votes in Michigan’s primary that were largely the result of a powerful anti-war campaign by Michigan’s large Arab community) has nothing to do with his age or the fact that he’s not 100% aligned with my domestic policy preferences.

Did I mention the whole “materially and rhetorically supporting the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza” thing? 

I don’t see how I’m supposed to feel energized about voting for the guy who casually talked about his “hope” for a ceasefire agreement while eating ice cream with a late-night TV host, or who has reaffirmed that he’s a Zionist and that “Jews aren’t safe” without an Israeli state, even as that state carries out massacres and intentional deprivation against an entire population who have little to no defense against it.

(Side note: Absolutely read this incredible, thorough essay by Pankaj Mishra in the London Review Of Books that digs into the Israel/Palestine problem and explains, including from the perspective of actual Holocaust survivors, why the idea that Jews aren’t safe without Israel is itself creating a markedly less safe world for Jewish people. It also includes an anecdote about then-Senator Biden pushing Israel to slaughter civilians that is…instructive.)

Not to mention the fact that the Biden Administration has routinely blocked all UN resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. We do this while claiming that these resolutions will somehow hurt the negotiations between Israel and Hamas, even though it’s been made clear by Israel’s leadership that they have no real desire for a ceasefire, are very obviously intent on completely removing the Palestinian people from Gaza and the West Bank, and have expressed a total unwillingness to entertain the two-state solution that Biden and his allies continue to tout. 

I thought I was losing my mind when I saw headlines about the U.S. airdropping aid to starving people in Gaza, something Biden touted, seemingly proving that he takes the issue seriously and cares about the Palestinian people. Except, Biden and the U.S. are perhaps uniquely positioned to see the war ended tomorrow if they truly wanted. We could refuse to send any more military aid or funding to Israel. Given that we send $3.3 billion a year for military support (reportedly 15% of the total defense budget in Israel), this would have a sizable and immediate impact.

It’s not without precedent. President Reagan (hardly a progressive) called and told Israel to call an immediate ceasefire when it attacked and laid siege to Beirut back in 1982. It took 20 minutes for Israeli leadership to do it. Twenty minutes. And that was after just 100 civilian deaths. In Gaza, the death toll just surpassed 30,000, over 10,000 of which are children.

We could also exercise several serious levers of power to force Israel to allow the needed amount of humanitarian aid into Gaza, aid that is currently being blocked both by the state and by far-right Israeli protesters at the borders.

Instead, we drop a pitiful amount of aid and hope it’s enough to distract from the fact that we continue to fund and embolden the brutal onslaught that makes aid necessary in the first place.

The fact that the Democratic establishment is still hell-bent on force-feeding Biden as our one and only viable candidate only serves to further highlight, in blaze orange, how out-of-touch they are with much of the population, let alone their party rank and file. And I’m pretty tired of comfortable white liberals decrying any and all concerns/criticisms of the current system or candidate as being irrational, unrealistic, or naive. 

When the house is on fire, you don’t stand around telling people to get back inside and raise their hands if they’d like to be saved, maybe, in a couple of years.

I’ll be voting “uninstructed” in Wisconsin’s April 2 primary election. Again, it feels like a small but important way for me to make my objection known to Biden and his utter failure on this issue.

I am furious that I’ll still likely have to vote for Biden in November, given that Trump seems all but guaranteed to be the only other viable candidate on the ballot at that time and I’m utterly terrified of what another term for him would mean for people here in this country, let alone abroad. 

What a shit sandwich the major parties—and this country’s ridiculous campaign and election “systems”—have offered up to us.

Something has to give. I wish I could say what it will or should be, but it seems clear that the status quo is unsustainable. I will continue to look to that radical and loving community—across this country and the globe—for better ways forward.