Watching Joe Biden’s Inaugural Address, a collection of cliches, and labored metaphors- perhaps he is sincere, or as sincere as an old pol can be. His appointments of Blinken, Nuland & R2P zealot Power offer, not hope, but demonstrates the utter persistence of a toxic American Exceptionalism. And a Technocracy, in thrall to an etiolated mythology, of the indispensability of American Leadership, as the placeholder for a ruthless, violent hegemony.
Rootless cosmopolitan,down at heels intellectual;would be writer.
'Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.'
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary