The ghost of Biden past gave a speech last night
I didn’t watch the speech except for a short excerpt. It is too depressing to see how depleted he is. I never liked the guy – at best, he was a mendacious, conniving mediocrity. But now, in addition to not having lost those qualities, his decline is ghastly. The idea that someone in that state is president is something I don’t like to dwell on overly, although of course I’m sharply aware of it.
And all of this was obvious during the campaign, but plenty of people cynically ignored it because of their profound and pathological hatred of Trump and their desire to be rid of him at any cost. Well, Joe Biden and the far leftists are the costs, and we all are paying the price.
I’m not even sure that Biden’s cognitive state really matters, either, because he will do whatever he’s told to do, and they will cover for any errors he makes right up till the moment that they decide it’s time to replace him.
If you want to read some summaries of the mean-spirited, dictatorial, self-aggrandizing, mendacious speech Biden gave, please go here, here, here (that last one’s a mite kinder to Biden), and also see this comment from “Rufus T. Firefly” on a previous thread.
Or, if humor is your thing, here’s a comment I found at Althouse:
Happy days are here again! That beastly orange brute has been ousted! And soon he and many of his deplorable supporters will be jailed for the crime of being hideous louts. And now we’re blessed with the brilliant mind of Joe Biden. His eloquence and erudition is legend! He has blessed us with a flurry of executive orders, his divine proclamations to undo all the damage that has been done. Our southern border has been flung open. No longer are children being held in cages of hate, only cages of love!
When I look at Biden’s candidacy and now his presidency, I cannot help but think – as so many others do – of the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Most people think Andersen wrote his stories for children, and he did – but not solely for children. If you haven’t read “The Emperor’s New Clothes” as an adult, I suggest you do so. You can find the text here, and it’s really far more clever than I had remembered, and more meaningful as well.
I had recalled the story as being about the difficulty of publicly criticizing an emperor or anyone in power. But on rereading it, I realize that it’s actually about a group of crooks who pull a clever con that makes it very difficult for anyone to criticize the emperor or be truthful about what they see before their very eyes. The ending goes like this:
The emperor…thought, “This procession has got to go on.” So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.
One year I bought each of my kids their own copy of, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and told them to read the text and internalize it because they would encounter the tale again and again as they progress through life.
I agree it is the perfect allegory for the current farce our betters are staging in the District of Columbia.
Rufus T. Firefly:
A couple of years ago I got a copy of a new translation of Andersen’s stories. They were even better in this translation. Plus, it included his stories for adults. I had never seen them before, and they are phenomenal.
I too always found Joe Biden a joke. Nearly a parody of a man who devotes his life to, “public service.” I didn’t loathe him as much as Ted Kennedy, who seemed truly vile, but I never respected Biden. On his second Presidential run, when he continued his streak of not winning a single primary, when he would talk about his lifetime of “public service” I would say aloud to the television, “Thank you! Thank you, Joe! You’ve already done enough to help me, too much. I release you of your duty. You are free of your obligation to serve me.” He didn’t seem to hear me through the cathode ray tube.
If anyone in Hollywood cared about true art this would make a very good story. A man who spends his life striving for the Presidency, debasing himself any way necessary along the path (the Clarence Thomas hearings were a particular low point), faking a life as a “man of the people” only to become brain addled and unable to assert any authority when finally reaching his goal. A marionette in the Oval Office he coveted. A joke to the citizenry.
Of course, since Beijing Biden never lets pass any opportunity for blathering about “systemic racism”, his maudlin speech, appealing entirely to those citizens whose response to almost everything is purely emotional (he talks about unity, and he refrains from tweeting mean things!), included a reference to “vicious hate crimes against Asian-Americans” while dishonestly implying that some amorphous “climate of hate” (not almost invariably black street-thugs) is responsible for these attacks. He also stated that the “government isn’t some foreign force in a distant capital”, when DC’s grotesque and costly militarization is likely to continue for many months, and when the resources of the corrupt DOJ/FBI are being directed primarily against those with the “wrong” political opinions.
Let’s just be honest: Ron Klain is the de facto POTUS.
I will try to find time to re-read Andersen. I read most of his stuff when I was young and a few of his hits as an adult, as bedtime stories for my children. I re-read a lot of the Brothers Grimm about a decade ago. Talk about an apt surname!
I think I’ve mentioned this here before, but in my experience nothing tops Der Struwwelpeter (sort-of translates to, “The Boogieman”) for sheer terror in children’s bedtime tales. It literally (pun intended) makes the six banned Dr. Seuss books look like “Little House on the Prairie.”
When I was not traveling on business I always read to my children before bedtime (up until, about age 8) (my wife would often play video tapes of me reading when I was on the road) and I read Der Struwwelpeter to them in German 4 – 6 times a year, on average. They didn’t understand much of the German at the time, but even the images are enough to give a kid (or adult) nightmares! I also really enjoyed reading, “The Five Chinese Brothers” to them (a tale of Chinese villagers trying to kill a boy by drowning, burning, beheading and suffocation, including fairly graphic illustrations of the attempts) and “Riki Tiki Tembo” (a story of another unfortunate Chinese boy trapped underwater in a well).
They don’t write ’em like they used to!
This wikipedia entry on Der Struwwelpeter is a fairly decent summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter
I thought Susan Rice, directed by Barack Obama, was the de facto president.
Maybe we have a de facto presidential committee, which includes Rice(Obama), Pelosi, Schumer, Klain, and a few more.
j e,
I forgot about the “attacks on Asians” thing. I guess the Dems are trying to misdirect so the Asians forget about the Dems dumping on them regarding college admissions?
“Forget it, JE. It’s Chinatown.”
Joan, sort of like a Communist Party Central Committee?
Hooray! We get to be with our families and friends for the 4th! Hate to tell SloJoe, but my family had such a gathering on Labor Day last year, and we also attended a family wedding of about 120 people in late January by traveling to another state. I guess we may be the exception.
The Emperor has no clothes, but I’m not sure how many really see that. There was a ridiculous article on AT this morning how Dems are now embarrassed by Biden ( https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/my_democrat_friends_are_getting_very_embarrassed.html )
Maybe Neo can speak to this, but NONE of the Dem friends I know are in the least embarrassed by the current state of affairs. SloJoe may be walking around naked and drooling, but those people see nothing but a wonderful, well-clothed, erudite leader.
physicsguy:
I haven’t talked to anyone about him recently, but I doubt they are upset. They hated Trump, and Trump is not president anymore. I do have one far left friend who never liked Biden in the first place, though. She doesn’t seem happy with the state of the country, but I don’t have political discussions with her because they are utterly futile.
Rufus T. Firefly:
I looked at that Wiki summary – egads! They didn’t pull their punches back then, did they? And now I know where “Edward Scissorhands” came from – although he was a lot more benign than the character in the book, if I’m remembering accurately.
Society used to be perfectly okay with frightening children half to death to teach them moral lessons. Even some of Andersen is very frightening – for example, “The Red Shoes.”
The only devoted Democrats I know seem to feel, very sincerely, that something wonderful has happened: that not only has something like a Nazi takeover been stymied, but a giant step toward ImagineLand has been taken, under the kind but firm leadership of a saintly old man whose very voice and visage causes them to get teary-eyed.
My language is loaded, obviously, but I’m really not exaggerating. I’m thinking of one person in particular, who’s very intelligent and very sweet-natured, but who somehow has been completely swept away by these emotions.
But like Neo, I too have at least one hard-core leftist friend who’s not very happy at all with Biden. He doesn’t rave and froth as he does about conservatives and especially about Trump, but he’s contemptuous of Biden.
The mechanism used in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is that if you cannot see the cloth you are stupid, or unfit for your office.
The mechanism used in America today is that if you do not see what you are told to see, you are racist/white supremacist/exhibiting white fragility.
” It literally (pun intended) makes the six banned Dr. Seuss books look like “Little House on the Prairie.”
This makes me think you never read those books, RTF.
Bears! Indians! Who would scalp people like Ma and Pa and Mary and Laura, no less.
THOSE were scary as hell bedtime reading. ;- )
And don’t tell Slo Joe, but our family wedding was 140 people, October 9th. Even the bride’s grandma who wore a turban because of her chemo-related hairlessness (which meant she was definitely immune suppressed) attended, with no adverse sequelae.
SHE decided she would dance at her granddaughter’s wedding–and she did!
In Witchmer’s Michigan, no less. But we were closer to the militia guys’ hangout –and her boat–than her office.
Like, maybe ADULT AMERICANS can make our own decisions about our health and safety???
Oh, I hope, I hope President Biden deems me well behaved enough that I am one of the lucky few who can attend a small barbecue in a third of a year. Please, President Biden, rain your clement mercy on my virus scarred body and heal my soul.
What a jackwagon.
I thought Jen Psaki said something revealing when she was asked when Biden would deliver his State of the Union speech and she said something like “well first we have to get through the Thursday night speech and then we’ll go from there.” I think she could have substituted “endure” for “get through”. It has to be painful to work in the White House trying to maneuver old Joe through his perilous public appearances. I agree that his speech was dreadful by normal standards but I bet his handlers were breathing a sigh of relief that they made it through another appearance without a disaster.
One of my best and oldest friends is a lefty albeit one usually moored in reality, which makes him unusual. Last night he posted:
“The president spoke tonight. He told the truth about the virus and he offered us hope.”
To say that I had issues with Trump would be an understatement, but the view of reality offered to us by leftists looks like a parallel dimension, one where Biden is a dynamo, is starting to bleed through. They could all be lying, of course, but I’m starting to think they’ve actually convinced themselves of it due to just how much they hated Trump.
Pay no attention to the Xiden mouthpiece, Obama acting through his proxy committee is our POTUS in all but name. Xiden’s only significance is in revealing what he’s been given to read aloud, E.O.’s and legislation he’s been given to sign.
To see where we’re headed, witness the California Board of Education voting on whether children will be required to chant prayers to the Aztec ‘god’ of human sacrifice and cannabalism.
https://www.city-journal.org/calif-ethnic-studies-curriculum-accuses-christianity-of-theocide
If that doesn’t convince liberals that there’s no depth of monstrous depravity to which the left will not sink, then nothing will suffice.
Perhaps that will be “a bridge too far” for liberals.
But I wouldn’t bet on it.
The civic club in our community puts on great day for 4th july. Decorated golf cart and classic car parade tossing candy to the kids. Booths for crafts, cake and pies other goodies. Hotdogs, hamburgers. links and cold drinks for all.
Then at dusk fireworks. Trucks, golf carts and lawn chairs line the bank of the lake. This year is going to be twice as good since we cancelled last year and will have twice the fireworks.
People come out of the woods from all around the county and all are welcomed.
This week we had a covid clinic at the church. County with local RX came in and 175 younger people were able to get the shot. That brings us to something like 90% vaccinated.
Sorry Joe but as of now bugger off … it’s on.
Hey, Unca Joe, about those illegals pouring across our southern border, I’m sure you’re making triply sure they all mask up and are suitably socially distanced at all times, . . .
. . . ’cause since you’re letting ’em in, I just know you’re making uber-sure they’re up on all the latest covid protocols and are dutifully following the science — right, Unca Joe?
I remember watching the second to last leader of the Soviet Union, Konstantin Chernenko, who looked terrible near the end of his life. He only lead for little more than a year, but the way Biden looks, it seems similar.
Perhaps, Biden is following the Soviet path as well as the CCP one.
Perhaps,
Re: Dr. Seuss…
Rufus T. Firefly:
I received “On Beyond Zebra” for Christmas as a child and it became my favorite Seuss book. It appealed to my sense of mystery of a great Beyond like HG Wells’ “Time Machine.”
So I was nonplussed as to OBZ’s controversy in portraying “people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.” I looked it up and the claim is based on a single image of an Arab-looking man contentedly riding atop a half-camel/half-reindeer-like creature. That was it.
https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/books/here-are-the-wrong-illustrations-that-got-six-dr-seuss-books-cancelled
I keep thinking this stuff can’t go any further and I keep getting it wrong. This is why I don’t play the stock market.
Biden isn’t really President… He just plays one on TV.
You laugh into that Abyss…
But the Real Power laughs back at you.
Sad reality
huxley,
I don’t feel like writing about the Seuss catastrophe, only to add that I understand your love of the book. My appreciation of Ted Geisel is akin to neo’s for the Bee Gees. Have you seen his work prior to children’s books? He had a long, fascinating career in advertising, including promotional stuff for the military in WWII. “Quick Henry, the Flit” was one of his long running series for a pesticide. He was also editor in chief of the Dartmouth Jack O’Lantern while an Undergraduate. Great man. His extramarital affair and first wife’s suicide is a tragedy, and it is difficult for me to reconcile that with what I know of him through his writings and reading what others have written about him. But I greatly enjoy his work*.
*You mention receiving, “If I Ran the Zoo” as a child. My folks didn’t have a lot of money and, although my sister and I were voracious readers we didn’t own many books (that changed when I was about 13). My best friend’s folks had signed up for some sort-of “book of the month” club from Seuss’ publisher and he had most all of Seuss’ works on a shelf at their house, along with other children’s books from the same publishing house. I remember eyeing that bookshelf with envy for years. When I had children of my own you can be sure I made sure we had all the great Seuss works in our home. Oddly, he was never any of their favorites. A girlfriend gave me a copy of “The Grinch” for Christmas when I was 15? 16? I was reading it for the millionth time and came across the line, “For 53 years I’ve put up with it now, I must stop Christmas from coming, but how?” I thought to myself, “Self, the Grinch doesn’t appear that old to me and a lot of other ages would fit that rhyme pattern. I wonder…” I paged to the front of the book and the Library of Congress listing. Sure enough! Geisel was 53 when he wrote it! I felt like I had deciphered the Rosetta Stone!
Fox reporter to Psaki: are you finding it easier to deal with the Border Patrol Union than the teacher union?
Psaki: (mystified expression)
Reporter: BP has reopened the Border. Teachers have not reopened the schools.
“I’m not even sure that Biden’s cognitive state really matters”
It matters partly because the actual President is the only one with any legal or moral authority. Other people can step in to assume the President’s power but that only lasts until someone else says “No.” When there’s a dispute over policy or politics, it’s the President who make the final decision. But if Ron Klain wants one thing and Susan Rice the other? If Jill Biden and Kamala Harris have a difference of opinion?
It also matters because the President is the one who most directly faces the consequences of his decisions. Whether it’s worrying about re-election or the judgment of history, the President is more likely to consider all sides of an issue before doing something. That’s not happening with Joe Biden.
We’re not even two months into his Administration and we’ve already seen:
1. Decisions on energy policy that have destroyed thousands of American jobs and sent the price of gas soaring.
2. Decisions (following years of reckless rhetoric) on immigration policy that have provoked a crisis on the southern U.S. border that’s gotten so bad, so fast that even the mainstream media are reporting on it.
When decision-makers don’t even bother thinking about the consequences, that only ends in disaster.
Mike
“Maybe Neo can speak to this, but NONE of the Dem friends I know are in the least embarrassed by the current state of affairs.”
While there are legitimate reasons to criticize Trump, as there are with any other President, the core of opposition to Trump genuinely had nothing to do with politics, policy, morality, truth, decency, or whatever other fancy excuse people offered. It was an existential terror that the world was no longer following the proper script.
It’s like that scene with the Joker and Harvey Dent in “The Dark Knight.” Nobody panics when everything goes according to plan, even if that plan is horrible.
Mike
Gregory+Harper– Thank you. Can anyone here (and we have some President-watchers who go back a long way) recall a President where, within the first couple months of his first term, the staff was concerned about him “getting through” a simple address to the Nation? And then would make that concern public?
So far, Ol’ Joe always looks like he is squinting to see the words on the ‘prompter. He may have very little awareness of what he is saying.
We are in uncharted waters.
I paged to the front of the book and the Library of Congress listing. Sure enough! Geisel was 53 when he wrote it! I felt like I had deciphered the Rosetta Stone!
Rufus T. Firefly:
Congratulations! There is a tiny burst of satisfaction when you decipher a bit o’ something from the text.
That’s a game I’ve been playing since my twenties — influenced largely by the New Criticism movement:
____________________________________________________
[New Criticism] emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object. –wiki
____________________________________________________
Those who write well enough, including songwriters, to reach large audiences usually pack more meaning into their work than many readers/listeners assume.
Such details, like the age of 53, may be private on the writer’s part and not necessary for appreciation of the work, but still present.
It’s also possible the writer didn’t consciously realize a meaning in the work. I once showed a poem I had written about a dead angel to my aunt in Santa Fe.
She looked at me square and said, “That’s about your father, isn’t it?”
I was stopped dead. She was right and it hadn’t occurred to me. I thought it was just a dream poem.
Another Mike,
William Henry Harrison fits that definition. His inauguration speech was one speech too many.
huxley,
Andrew Klavan explains a trait he shares with other writers I know of (I think Kurt Vonnegut and J.D. Salinger were also famous for this) in that he never answers questions about meaning regarding his stories and scripts. He believes, regardless of his intent when writing, works of art take on their own lives once created, and, like your story about your poem, the creator may not even completely understand the creation.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Well, magicians don’t tell their tricks. Or appreciate others doing so. It’s understandable.
I’m with poet Lew Welch:
_________________________
Guard the Mysteries!
Constantly reveal Them!
_________________________
That doesn’t mean there aren’t tricks or it’s pointless to consider or discuss them.
Skips in the SOTU delivery:
January 2017 (Trump)
January 2009 (Obama)
January 2001 (Bush the Younger)
January 1993 (Clinton)
January 1989 (Bush the Elder)
January 1981 (Reagan)
January 1973 (Nixon)
January 1956 (Eisenhower)
January 1946 (Truman)
January 1945 (Roosevelt)
January 1944 (Roosevelt)
December 1932 (Hoover)
December 1931 (Hoover)
December 1930 (Hoover)
December 1929 (Hoover)
December 1928 (Coolidge)
December 1927 (Coolidge)
December 1926 (Coolidge)
December 1925 (Coolidge)
December 1924 (Coolidge)
December 1920 (Wilson)
December 1919 (Wilson)
The addresses in January 1969 and in January 1977 were delivered by the outgoing President (Johnson and Ford, respectively).
Wilson’s in-person delivery in December 1913 was the 1st in 113 years. In 1919 and 1920, his wife and his doctor were hiding him from the vice president, the cabinet, and everyone else. Coolidge and Hoover elected to bag in-person delivery. Roosevelt revived it. The adjustment in delivery dates occurred after the 20th Amendment came into effect. The last year in which the President was inaugurated on 4 March was 1933. Roosevelt in January of 1945 was less than three months from death; his inaugural address ran for 560 words – less than one single-spaced typed page in the old elite font. Eisenhower had suffered a heart attack in September 1955 and was presumably on light duty.
I didn’t realize there were any skips. It’s not all that unusual. What is unusual is that Biden’s been hiding for a year and has been in office for seven weeks without taking questions from the most compliant media any president has ever faced (with the possible exception of the press during WWii). Other presidents who delayed taking questions were preoccupied with personnel matters (Bush II because it took so long to certify the election and Trump because he had to improvise a recruitment and vetting system); these delays were around half as long as Biden’s delay thus far.
Rufus T. Firefly:
I once wrote a book of poetry containing an appendix in the back with my comments on what was on my mind when I wrote each poem. I would tell people, “The answers are in the back!”
My idea was gently subversive. IMO people have been so bludgeoned by cryptic poetry, lyrics and literature that they’ve given up trying to encounter a work any more deeply than “That makes me think of butterflies and I feel good when I think of butterflies.”
That’s OK. There’s truth to the notion that people get what they get and that’s fine. It’s not the artist’s or the critic’s job to supervise them. But I say much is missed by settling for the subjective surface like that.
Art Deco:
I read somewhere – don’t have time to check it out now with any thoroughness – that when an official SOTU address wasn’t given by the new president, most of the time that president addressed a joint session of Congress early on, in a speech that wasn’t called a SOTU address but stood in for one.
To take one example: Trump:
“IMO people have been so bludgeoned by cryptic poetry, lyrics and literature”
I’m not sure it’s the cryptic nature of the work itself as much as it is critics using the techniques to pretend meaning exists where none actually does.
Mike
Rufus @ 1221–
I wouldn’t know. He was before my time; FDR was my first Prez, but I was still pooping yellow when he died. And I am certain each of them said something to elicit a “why did he say that?” or “there had to be a better way to say it” from staff at some time.
MBunge:
I understand that at least theoretically it matters, or should matter in the normal course of things. But in this case I don’t think it matters because I don’t think he’s at all in charge, and I think that the people who are in charge are in massive agreement on things and therefore there won’t be any disputes of the sort you mention. I think that in an emergency they would act, and we would never know. I think they have been in charge from the moment it was decided that he would be the candidate.
I’m not ordinarily into conspiracy theories, but in this case I do believe in what I just said.
Republicans should simply boycott any in-person Biden address.
Why? Let Ted Cruz be named sole spokesman to explain it.
A half empty chamber and the press afraid to ask why lest the door be opened to a discussion of the crime that dare not be named.
It would not be a State of the Union in any event, his first year.
Why participate is a charade?
It’s been awhile since I researched the matter, but such an address requires both the convening of a joint session, and an official invitation. The president is not Ceasar, he cannot just walk into the chambers and harrangue as he pleases.