President Joe Biden seems at first glance to be a complex political creature. He was elected to the presidency, after little public scrutiny, as a moderate Democrat, but has ended his first term in office as what some would consider a raging neo-progressive, and he has had his foot to that pedal throughout his first term in office.
But Biden is not complex. He is a simple man, a copyist and
a plagiarist. Such men borrow the characters of others. They live, so to speak,
in the skins of others. T.S. Elliot, in The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, described the type perfectly:
No! I am not Prince
Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord,
one that will do
To swell a progress,
start a scene or two…
Deferential, glad to
be of use,
Politic, cautious, and
meticulous;
Full of high sentence,
but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed,
almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the
Fool.
Biden is entirely unoriginal. Biden’s first term in office may
be viewed as a somewhat distorted and exaggerated version of Obama’s presidency.
Biden, Obama’s Vice President, is simply completing a work of destruction begun
by Obama, whose two terms in office were principally a work of destruction
aimed at Reaganism and ascendant conservatism.
Biden’s critics are correct in supposing he has, to put it
politely, age problems. But his chief problem, now and throughout his half
century in politics, is that he always was an “attendant lord.” As president, he
is, almost defiantly, no longer “deferential and glad to be of use.” A modest active
politician of fifty years standing would be an oxymoron, a contradiction of
terms.
Biden’s “high sentences” early in his career were those of
others. And even today a lack of a character and high principle, his imitative
nature, his plagiaristic instincts, make him “a bit obtuse; at times, indeed
almost ridiculous – almost, at times, the Fool.”
Foolishness involves the adoption of means ill fitted to
ends. In the not too distant future, objective historians may regard the Obama
years as an episodic interruption of a fructifying conservative movement, which
is nothing other than common sense and vibrant traditional principles applied
pragmatically to culture and politics.
Biden’s son Hunter without question has been exceedingly
foolish, and there are indications the son was acting on behalf of his father
in amassing personal wealth from foreign nations such as Vladimir Putin’s
Russia and Xi Jinping’s China, both countries that have successfully positioned
themselves as permanent enemies of the United States. China is not merely an
economic competitor, and Russia, under Putin, little more than a Stalinist
want-to-be, appears to be bidding farewell to the country’s status as a Western
European power.
CNN – no supporter of Trump – last
week reported that President Biden was deeply “obsessed” and increasingly
“irritated” by the media’s focus on his son. Even his aides, the report
indicated, steer clear of the subject, and Hunter Biden’s legal predicament is
assiduously avoided during campaign meetings.
It is understandable why Hunter’s father would rather the
media talk about the weather, the prime subject of conversation when his father
met on numerous occasions with his son’s business associates, according to
Biden apologists.
All the Bidens, most especially those who had personally
profited from Hunter’s questionable business associations, likely wish “Biden
the younger” had not left his lap-top-from-Hell in a computer repair shop. That
politically poisonous laptop proved to be the source of much media speculation
on the eve of a presidential reelection campaign against former President
Donald Trump, mortally wounded, Democrats hope, by scores of felony counts that
will be percolating through the courts, some court watchers suppose, well
beyond the presidential election in 2024.
Nothing gets better with age: not the health, mental and
otherwise, of 80 year-old attendant lords; not percolating court cases; not seemingly
impassable divisions between political parties; not increasingly politicized
judicial systems; not presumably objective media outlets… nothing… nothing…
What a pity the Bidens, father and son, had not spent more
time with Shakespeare and less with wealth acquisition by means of Burisma
Holdings Limited.
As they say,
when the age is in,
the wit is out.
Much Ado About
Nothing (3.5.31-2)
Nature in you stands
on the very verge
Of her confine: you
should be rul’d and led
By some discretion
that discerns your state
Better than you
yourself.
King Lear (2.4.140-44)
Comments