“If I had to choose: to have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I would not hesitate to choose the latter,” the third US President Thomas Jefferson once said.
Naive Jefferson!
He believed that the task of the press is to criticize the government, carefully observe whether it violates the established laws, whether it infringes upon the freedom of citizens - in a word, according to the Latin expression, to watch the guards.
Could he imagine that two hundred years would pass - and the fourth power, squealing with delight, would lick the shoes of power of the first?
The inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden, was modest.
The crowds that had gathered in the Washington Mall in the old days replaced 200,000 American flags, and the stage at the foot of the Capitol, on which the newly minted president spoke, was surrounded by a mighty fence with barbed wire on top.
The few guests dozed on folding chairs from IKEA, Biden cosplayed the late Soviet secretaries general on the podium, and the national guards, armed to the teeth, were bored around the perimeter.
But the media were delighted!
“As Lady Gaga sang the national anthem, the skies opened and sunlight reflected off the Capitol, illuminating the flag,” New Yorker correspondent Olivia Nuzzi tweeted breathlessly with delight.
New York Times columnist Mark Leibovich was even more eloquent: “Whether it was due to the absence of the former president or not, it seemed as if the scene was dominated by a bipartisan lightness.
The snow stream was replaced by the sun and a distinctly serene aura. "
And of course, CNN, the main factory of fake news, did not stand aside.
CNN's head of strategic communications, Matt Dornick, tweeted a photo of fireworks blossoming beautifully in the dark sky over the Washington Monument, with the comment, “This team really knows optics.
These images will inspire our friends and shake our enemies. "
Seriously?
Is this Chinese pyrotechnics supposed to make US enemies tremble?
But Dornik's comical sycophancy is not yet the very bottom to which many previously respected American media were trying to reach these days.
Perhaps the prize for the deepest immersion will go to MSNBC "analyst" John Heilemann, who compared ex-presidents gathered at the Capitol and their wives - Bill and Hillary Clinton, George and Laura Bush, Barack and Michelle Obama ... with Marvel superheroes, "avengers", gathered in one place to support their friend Joe Biden.
And Sleepy Joe's speech, gray as a fireman's pants, Heilemann compared no less than Lincoln's second inaugural speech!
Enough quotes, though.
And so it is clear that the overwhelming majority of the American media - the very ones that fiercely bit Trump all his years in the White House - will now praise his "winner" with the same enthusiasm.
And they will do this not only in the first hundred days of Biden's rule (at this time, the media usually avoid criticizing the new president - however, Trump has become an exception here too), but throughout his entire term.
Now, when only five days have passed since Biden's inauguration and he has already taken his first independent steps in the role of president, it becomes clear that he will really need the support of the media.
Because the scale of the problems facing the American leader is truly enormous, and the tasks that he has to solve are extremely difficult - take at least the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, which for some reason is in no hurry to fade away.
And it is already clear that Biden did not start with that.
In his first three working days in office, the new master of the White House signed 30 decrees, mostly aimed at combating Trump's legacy.
One of the first decrees, Biden stopped construction of the wall on the border with Mexico, which was perhaps Trump's main campaign promise.
Under Trump, they managed to build only 400 kilometers - in general, a drop in the bucket, since the southern border of the United States exceeds 3,000 kilometers.
Democrats in Congress have fought desperately against this construction, not giving Trump money to build the wall.
Then Trump issued a decree on the introduction of an emergency regime, which allowed him to use the Pentagon budget for his own purposes.
Now Biden has canceled this regime with one stroke of the pen.
By the next decree, Biden sent into oblivion the measures to tighten immigration policy introduced by Trump.
Trump has banned citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, which he considered (not unreasonably) breeding grounds for Islamic terrorism.
Biden lost this ban.
Another decree of the 46th President of the United States suspends the procedure for the deportation of illegal migrants for the first 100 days of his presidency.
Biden repeatedly promised to stop the deportation during his election campaign - and he did not delay the fulfillment of this promise.
The White House press service, in the face of Jane Psaki (another relic of the Obama era), who returned to her beloved work, explained that this step will allow the government ... to concentrate on combating the coronavirus pandemic!
No more, no less.
This most humane measure does not seem to affect "migrants associated with terrorism and espionage," but it will apply to those convicted of ordinary crimes and those suspected of such.
Easing the plight of illegal migrants was clearly the first item in the action plan of the new owner of the White House.
But he paid no less attention to the energy policy of his predecessor.
On the first day of his presidency, Biden signed a decree halting construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas, as well as canceling more than 100 orders of Trump, allegedly "threatening the environment."
In addition, Biden very quickly returned the United States to the Paris Climate Agreement, thus fulfilling the cherished dream of greens and environmentalists around the world.
Donald Trump believed - and not without reason - that the Paris Agreement provided a competitive advantage to countries like China, and, on the contrary, disadvantaged the United States, thereby damaging American industry and depriving American citizens of jobs.
But Joe Biden has other priorities.
On the second day of his presidency, he introduced a two-month moratorium on new contracts for the production of oil and gas in the federal lands.
This means that permits for drilling new wells and licenses for production will not be issued for 60 days.
And whether they will be issued later is still a big question.
And this measure has already made some states, especially New Mexico, the third largest oil-producing state in the country, freeze from fear of oil and energy workers, and half of the oil and gas production here is produced on federal lands.
If the Biden administration freezes oil and gas production for a long time, it will turn into a disaster for the state, and the ripple effect of these measures will damage small businesses, which already can hardly cope with the consequences of the pandemic.
The state of New Mexico voted for Biden in the November elections, although even then Sleepy Joe's statements that he intends to "stop the entire oil industry because it pollutes the environment" were alarming to many.
But ... political considerations outweighed economic ones.
And now the reckoning has come.
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The shutdown of the Keystone XL pipeline alone will result in the loss of 11,000 jobs directly and up to 60,000 jobs indirectly.
And if Biden imposes a permanent ban on oil and gas development on federal lands, it will cost the American economy a shocking one million jobs.
This is the opinion of Frank McCiarola, senior vice president for politics and economics at the American Petroleum Institute.
“Two key points of (Biden's -
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inauguration speech
are the restoration of alliances and the strengthening of our economy.
But this decision contradicts both of these priorities, ”Macchiarola said.
And he is right, because the closure of the Keystone project hurts not only the American oil workers, but also Canada, relations with which in recent years can hardly be called too good.
In 2019, the United States became a net energy exporter for the first time in 67 years.
Trump made the United States an energetically independent power, ensured its energy security, and Biden's decisions lead to the fact that America will lose this security and independence again.
"The first few days (Biden -
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) should be of concern to all Americans because the administration is clearly taking action that will damage the economy and cost Americans jobs," McCiarola said in an interview with Breitbart News.
"I think the first four days of Biden's rule gave a clear picture of what the next four years might look like."
And you can't say that the Americans weren't warned.
Because Trump has done it more than once - including during his latest debate with Sleepy Joe.
However, those who voted for Biden (and it was not only the dead from the cemeteries who voted for him) preferred not to hear these warnings.
A metaphor suggests itself: Biden behaves like an elephant in a china shop, smashing and destroying everything that was done by his hated predecessor.
Here are just an elephant - a symbol of the Republican Party, and the emblem of Biden's party from time immemorial has been a donkey.
However, under certain conditions, a donkey in a china shop can do a lot of mischief.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.