Finally, American Politics Are Boring Again

An appreciation of how wonderfully, revolutionarily boring Joe Biden has been as president

Saul Austerlitz
GEN

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Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

What’s President Joe Biden’s position on the legal travails of Representative Matt Gaetz? Where does he stand on the removal of some Dr. Seuss books from publication? What public comments did he make about the Japanese golfer who won the Masters last weekend? What does President Joe Biden think about NFTs? After copious research, I believe the answers to those questions are none, he doesn’t, he didn’t, and he almost definitely has no idea what that is.

I keep trying to articulate just what we are currently experiencing as a country, and I think I’ve found a good comparison. Do you remember that feeling you would have after standing far too close to the stage at a big concert? You would emerge after 60 or 90 minutes of having your eardrums pummeled, and all the workaday noise of the city — the honking taxicabs and the street-corner conversations and the rumble of trains — would sound oddly tinny and distant. You’d wonder, would your ears recover after the beating they had just endured? Could you ever hear normally again? And why did everything suddenly seem so quiet?

Donald Trump was a foghorn blaring over the landscape, drowning out all other observable sound. He had…

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Saul Austerlitz
GEN
Writer for

Author of Generation Friends: An Inside Look at the Show That Defined a Television Era +4 more. Work published in the NY Times and many others. Teacher at NYU.