As investigations reveal concerns about President Biden’s memory lapses and mishandling of classified information, it highlights deeper issues in the functioning of the US empire beyond electoral choices. This has given rise to the question of whether a dementia patient can be the President of a country.

It seems that the signs of dementia, which Biden’s supporters had long dismissed as a mere ‘stutter,’ are indeed indicative of the condition. Despite the investigators ‘uncovering evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,’ the special counsel assigned to examine Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents states that ‘no criminal charges are warranted in this matter.’

This would typically be a cause for celebration by this government and its allies, had they not cited the president’s senility as one of the reasons for this determination.”

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Special Counsel Robert Hur writes to Attorney General Merrick Garland, saying that “Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023. And his cooperation with our investigation… will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully — that is, with intent to break the law — as the statute requires.”

Joe Biden’s repeated mistake, claiming that former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl accompanied him on his first international tour as US President, despite Kohl’s death in 2017, highlights a concerning deterioration in Biden’s memory of recent events.

Hur claims that during interviews, Biden was unable to recall even basic details like the years of his vice presidential tenure or the passing of his son Beau. Hur adds that between the president’s 2017 interviews and the previously stated taped ones from 2017, Biden’s recall had gotten poorer.

Put simply, the president has a malfunctioning brain. It’s fired. The “free world’s leader” has become mentally debilitated. It resembles Swiss cheese within.

And things are getting worse. The president referred to the president of Egypt as the president of Mexico during a press conference where Biden was presumably trying to reassure everyone that his brain is functioning normally in light of the recent big news. He also froze in mid-sentence when he tried in vain to recall where his son got the rosary he carries. Biden made two incorrect references to deceased European presidents as still being in office this week alone.

The fact that a real, live dementia sufferer has been the US president for the past three years should be enough to convince anyone who is still holding onto the idea that the identity of the president matters. The US empire has been operating precisely as it did before Biden’s election, unaffected by the fact that the man in charge is in a state of free-falling degenerative neurological disease.

That position might be held by anyone, and it would have no discernible impact on how the US empire is managed. A person in a coma might be president. A jar of olives from Kalamata might be the president. A figurehead is all that stands in the way of the beneficial improvements that Americans hope elections will bring to their nation and the wider world.

This presents a challenge for Americans who want to see changes made to specific areas of their government’s actions, such as its support of an ongoing genocide in Gaza. If the person they were led to believe is in charge isn’t, then whose conscience are they trying to appeal to? If the people who make the decisions aren’t even on the ballot, then who do they vote for?

The unsettling reality that the operation of the empire is too vital to be put in the hands of voters is made clear by the US president’s dementia. The US government’s annual actions carry far too much authority for the electorate to have any influence over.

The unelected empire managers who move in and out of every administration and keep a constant presence in government agencies and institutions that are close to the government oversee the global power structure that is centered around the United States, not the official elected government of that country. These empire administrators collaborate with corporate forces and establish partnerships with numerous countries, resources, and associates that serve as components of the unofficial US empire.

It implies that Americans will not be able to vote their way out of this dilemma. You will never be allowed to exercise any kind of influence over any of the key components of the US-centralized power structure—genocide, militarism, economic injustice, authoritarianism, or any other issue—through the official democratic process. In Western “democracies,” voting is a way to give us the appearance of control—it’s like letting a kid pretend to drive while holding a toy steering wheel.

That is to say, there is no voting-related way out of this dilemma, but it does not entail that there is no way out of this mess overall. Pro-Palestine activists are already posing serious challenges to Israeli arms dealers’ business operations, and Israel is now resorting to desperate online influence operations as a result of the public’s growing demand for knowledge about the situation in Gaza. Such measures can be applied universally to bring about the dissolution of the imperial power structure. The use of our numbers to achieve meaningful change will swiftly go from being impossible to feasible to likely to inevitable once enough people start to turn against the empire.

However, we must first give up putting all of our faith in the election process. Every four years, Americans’ attention is drawn to this meaningless puppet performance about the choice of a heartless empire manager to serve as the interim official figurehead at the front desk of the permanent imperial apparatus. Feel free to cast your ballot, if you so choose. However, don’t let that theatrical ceremony divert your attention from the true goal, which is to awaken everyone and start enforcing meaningful change.