{"id":322,"date":"2025-06-01T15:28:47","date_gmt":"2025-06-01T15:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kudosscreen.com\/?p=322"},"modified":"2025-06-02T11:25:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T11:25:29","slug":"the-biden-years-when-america-started-to-resemble-the-late-stage-ussr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kudosscreen.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/01\/the-biden-years-when-america-started-to-resemble-the-late-stage-ussr\/","title":{"rendered":"The Biden years: When America started to resemble the late-stage USSR"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Washington became a gerontocracy<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a while since we\u2019ve heard much about Joe Biden, hasn\u2019t it? Yet here he is, back in the headlines \u2013 not because of some triumphant return to form, but for all the wrong reasons. The former US president has once again found himself at the center of national attention, thanks to a sequence of revealing and deeply troubling events.<\/p>\n

It began with Axios publishing the full audio of Biden\u2019s now-infamous interview with special prosecutor Robert Hur. The same interview in which Hur concluded that the then president suffered from serious memory issues. As the recording confirmed, he wasn\u2019t wrong. Biden struggled to recall basic facts \u2013 even the date his son died.<\/p>\n

Days later, another bombshell dropped: Biden had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. The news barely had time to circulate before the release of Original Sin, a book by CNN\u2019s Jake Tapper and Axios\u2019s Alex Thompson, tore down what little remained of the White House facade.<\/p>\n

The authors didn\u2019t just suggest that Biden had declined mentally during his presidency. They asserted that he had not been governing at all. Instead, they described a \u2018Politburo\u2019 of family members and close aides who effectively ran the United States in his name. It\u2019s a term that will sound all too familiar to the Russian ear, and one that cuts deeper than many Americans might realize.<\/p>\n

For years, critics of the US establishment \u2013 especially abroad \u2013 have joked about the \u2018Washington Obkom\u2019, a reference to the old Communist Party regional committees of the Soviet Union. Today that comparison doesn\u2019t seem like satire. It feels like a diagnosis.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s especially ironic that these revelations are coming not from conservative firebrands or Russian media, but from the very liberal American outlets \u2013 CNN, Axios \u2013 that worked so hard in 2024 to prop up the Biden administration and conceal the cracks forming behind the curtain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n Read more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"FILE
Biden\u2019s cancer cover-up: A medical screw-up or a calculated sob story?<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But I\u2019m less interested in their delayed honesty than in the questions Americans are now starting to ask. How did the United States, with all its checks and balances, end up with a gerontocratic shadow government? Why did Washington begin to resemble Moscow circa 1982?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start there.<\/p>\n

A gerontocracy emerges when the ruling elite can no longer tolerate change. In the USSR, it was the ageing leadership of the Communist Party that clung to power. In the US, it\u2019s the political generation that peaked in the 1990s and 2000s, the last so-called \u2018consensus\u2019 generation in American politics. Their grip on power outlasted their ideas. Though Democrats and Republicans had their differences, they broadly agreed on the same post-Cold War worldview. They ran the show for decades \u2013 until Donald Trump shattered that illusion in 2016.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s rise forced a reckoning. On the right, younger Republicans moved toward a more nationalist, populist agenda. On the left, Democrats tacked hard toward identity politics and expanded welfare, partly driven by their reliance on minority voting blocs and partly by the legacy of Barack Obama\u2019s progressive rhetoric.<\/p>\n

By the time Trump\u2019s first term ended, the American political elite faced a nightmare: if they handed power to the next generation, they risked total collapse. The establishment Republicans had already been steamrolled by Trump\u2019s base. Democrats feared the same fate if they embraced their more radical progressives.<\/p>\n

Their solution was to cling to the past. Enter Joe Biden, a relic of the consensus era, sold to voters as a unifying moderate. In reality, he was a placeholder. A human firewall designed to stop the rising tide on both sides. The hope was that a return to \u2018normal\u2019 would restore calm. Instead, it prolonged the crisis. Biden, like Brezhnev before him, became the living embodiment of a system unable to face reality.<\/p>\n

\n Read more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"Syria\u2019s
What is Trump\u2019s game in Syria?<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And now, as Americans look back on the Biden years, they are forced to reckon with the consequences of their denial. Power didn\u2019t disappear, it simply drifted into backrooms and family circles. Decision-making was outsourced to unaccountable figures behind the scenes. And the public was kept in the dark. Even Biden himself, we now know, was shielded from bad polling numbers.<\/p>\n

But the deeper lesson is more uncomfortable. Change comes whether you want it to or not. The US establishment tried to shut out the new generation. It only worked temporarily. Trump is back in power. Yes, he is old. But unlike Biden, he has surrounded himself with younger, dynamic figures who are already shaping the Republican Party\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

The Democrats, by contrast, have learned nothing. Despite their crushing defeat in 2024, the old leadership continues to resist renewal. And now it\u2019s costing them. Just recently, the Republicans passed Trump\u2019s major tax bill in the House of Representatives by a single vote. That vote was lost because Democratic Congressman Gerry Connolly, aged 75, had passed away just before the session.<\/p>\n

He was the third Democrat to die in office this year.<\/p>\n

This morbid pattern hasn\u2019t gone unnoticed. Americans have begun to joke grimly that the Democratic Party is literally dying. And the punchlines, as dark as they may be, contain more truth than fiction.<\/p>\n

Washington is starting to resemble Brezhnev\u2019s Moscow \u2013 not just in age, but in inertia. In the end, the lesson isn\u2019t about personalities. It\u2019s about systems that refuse to adapt. Systems that cling to the past until the present falls apart.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Washington Obkom\u2019 may have seemed like a Russian jest once. It\u2019s not a joke anymore.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This article was first published by the online newspaper\u00a0Gazeta.ru<\/a> and was translated and edited by the RT team<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Washington became a gerontocracy It\u2019s been a while since we\u2019ve heard much about Joe Biden, hasn\u2019t it? Yet here he is, back in the headlines \u2013 not because of some triumphant return to form,…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading “The Biden years: When America started to resemble the late-stage USSR”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kudosscreen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kudosscreen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kudosscreen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kudosscreen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kudosscreen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kudosscreen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326,"href":"https:\/\/kudosscreen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kudosscreen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kudosscreen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kudosscreen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kudosscreen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}