Describing Biden
The following description is quite on point. It’s by Miranda Devine:
This is quintessential Biden. Lying, gaslighting, emphatic, nasty, denying reality while in the same breath denying he’s denying reality. It is so out of the bounds of normal behaviour that people discount it or blame their own perception.
That last sentence describes the Big Lie phenomenon on the part of the Biden administration that I wrote about in this recent post.
Gaslighting seems to come as easily as breathing to this entire administration (including the clueless KJP), as it does to all the endlessly bloviating and mendacious talking heads on CNN and MSNBC and all the wretched scribblers at Pravda-on-the-Hudson and Pravda-on-the-Potomac. While all these knaves in positions of power do so in order to protect their power and their unmerited privilege, what can one say about the tens upon tens of millions of foolish and misguided citizens who uncritically ingest this malicious “malarkey” and will happily vote, in two months, for those who espouse it?
No one possessing even a modicum of common decency could imagine that it was their interpretation of Bidet’s words and demeanor that was faulty.
I suspect those who appear to discount Bidet’s lying histrionics simply feel as did FDR. When someone pointed out that a leader of a foreign country was a bastard of a dictator… reportedly, FDR responded with, “yeah, but he’s our bastard”.
Anything that advances the agenda is permissable because as Dostoevsky observed, “if there is no God, everything is permitted.”
The line, in 2020, that “decency” was on the ballot (Biden was decent, Trump not, in this view) was nauseating to anyone at all familiar with Joe Biden and his history.
Sounds like the Democrat dream politician!
The man would be ridiculous if he were not so thoroughly malevolent.
I understand using the term gaslighting, but this seems like basic lying. In the movie that coined the term, the guy didn’t stand there dimming the light in front of the woman and say it was her imagination. That’s how I see Biden’s lying.
Anything that advances the agenda is permissable because as Dostoevsky observed, “if there is no God, everything is permitted.”
–Geoffrey Britain
I listened to an audiodrama of the Brothers K. long ago and don’t remember it too well, so I thought I would go down that rabbit hole. Dostoevsky, as far as I know, did not say it himself, and none of his characters say that exactly, though close enough:
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‘But what will become of men then?’ I [Dmitri] asked him, ‘without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?’
‘Didn’t you know?’ [Rakitin] said laughing, ‘a clever man can do what he likes,’ he said.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28054/28054-h/28054-h.htm
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I’m sure there is something to the idea, but I’ve never been impressed, even as a Christian, by Christian claims to a moral supremacy for their faith. Such arguments always strike me as fallacies of the excluded middle.
Here’s an entertaining argument from the other side:
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Of course, if you give up on God, it seems a lot harder to establish an absolute and objective morality than many philosophers think. But that’s to be expected — that’s why there are so many different ethical theories. It’s why ethicists get paid the big bucks. The idea of God doesn’t help them one bit.
–“Morality in a Godless World”
https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/if-god-dead-why-isnt-everything-permitted
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That’s why ethicists get paid the Big Bucks!
You know it.
“Of course, if you give up on God, it seems a lot harder to establish an absolute and objective morality than many philosophers think.”
The problem is philosophers don’t consider genetic development of the human mind. I have suggested before that the “absolute” component of morality might come from the evolved human brain, with certain characteristics generally common (and thus “absolute”) to most humans, such as fear of snakes, disgust with poop, disinclination to engage in incest, some sense of fairness and reciprocity (Golden Rule; free rider), tendency to attach “agency” to perceptions that don’t have an obvious cause or source, etc. Our psychology is sufficiently complex that some of this comes across as a “just so” argument from evolutionary psychology, so I am open to alternative ideas.
But many features of morality also have cultural sources. We are immersed in a Western Christianized culture and have difficulty conceiving of alternative viewpoints as being legitimate, such as honor killing, etc.
I get so sick of the emotional blackmail. Biden forever telling us that he’s decent and compassionate and empathetic. That he’s suffered. That his son and daughter and wife died. That he’s a little guy who grew up poor. Middle class Joe.
And then we have to forget that he’s forever saying that he graduated at the top of his class and has a higher IQ than other people and that he is forever challenging people to pushup contests or threatening to beat them up behind the gym in back of the school, and that he lies through his teeth most of the time.
It’s too much. I don’t want to have to forever feel sorry for the guy. I’m glad that Trump didn’t make us feel sorry for him and feel like he was so weak he needed me and you to make his life complete. I’m glad that Obama was arrogant. I felt a little sorry for him, the half-Black kid abandoned by his father, but he didn’t demand that I do so.
Bush 2 didn’t literally demand that we pity him, but it was hard not to. I’m glad he’s gone too. We ought to be free to dislike our politicians and not feel like they are unhappy children that we have to comfort and reassure.
huxley,
Does whether Dostoevsky actually said those exact words detract even in the slightest from their profundity?
What matters is the truth and wisdom of a succinct expression, and its applicability in being used… not who actually said it.
“I’ve never been impressed, even as a Christian, by Christian claims to a moral supremacy for their faith.”
Christians like everyone have feet of clay. As for the Christian faith, there are many interpretations, which disagree to one extent or another. So which one can claim to best offer the most faithful morality?
A fictional author I greatly respected for his insights was John D. McDonald. In one of his stories his main character Travis McGee related, “for me, organized religion is too much like being marched in formation to see a sunset”.
I view Jesus Christ as the sunset and, despite how sincere our witness may be, it is inherently flawed. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known”.
Does whether Dostoevsky actually said those exact words detract even in the slightest from their profundity?
Geoffrey Britain:
It matters to the extent someone claims Dostoevsky himself said it. You will notice (or not) that for practical purposes I agreed your paraphrase was part of the text.
I’m not criticizing Christians for feet of clay, but for the fallacy of the excluded middle.
In this case, the notion that without God, there can be no morality. And you make no effort to address that omission.