Today I read the first few words of an article in The New Yorker: “Biden’s Pardon of Hunter Further Undermines…”
For the briefest of moments I saw a ray of hope. Perhaps The New Yorker‘s writers realized what really is at stake? Perhaps they were concerned about the trends undermining the rule of law?
Sadly, no. The missing expression (the title was truncated to fit into the column display presented by my e-mail program) was “… His Legacy”. That’s all they were concerned about. Biden’s legacy. The broader context: tactical victories and defeats in the never-ending political warfare in the United States.
One of my cats, mourning the rule of law…
Watching polarized American politics in recent years, it was evident that both sides were consumed by ideology and the desire to defeat the opposing side. Republicans were busy building an anti-establishment creed along with the alarming personality cult of Trump; meanwhile, Democrats have gone overboard with woke nonsense, from cancel culture to fights over pronouns to defunding the police. Republicans went out of their way to “own the Libs”, while Democrats strived to end the “white supremacist patriarchy”. However, there was one crucial difference: By and large (and notwithstanding Republican accusations about “weaponizing” the government), the Democrats mostly played by the rules, i.e., they supported the rules-based system of the American Republic, whereas Republicans declared the system itself, the “deep state”, their key enemy. As January 6, 2020 demonstrated, they were quite willing to step outside the boundaries of the rule of law to have their way.
This, of course, put Democrats at a disadvantage, akin to fighting with one hand tied behind their backs.
But now, I think, this is about to change. Call it Joe Biden’s “fuck you” moment: he decided to use his presidential powers to pardon his own son, Hunter Biden, despite repeated assurances that he had no plans to do so.
I really cannot blame him. When the president-elect is a convicted felon, when many of his nominees for key positions are themselves at the very least the targets of credible accusations of criminal behavior, I suspect Biden had enough, playing by the rules. (Technically speaking it is of course not against the rules for the President to pardon his own family members, even though it is obviously a massive conflict of interest.)
This, I think, is a pivotal, watershed moment, however. By pardoning Hunter, Biden basically declared that the rules no longer apply to their side either. This seems to be yet another nail in the coffin of the great American experiment. Once again I see historical parallels. Two thousand years ago, it was Brutus and his co-conspirators who decided that the rules no longer apply to them either. Granted, pardoning a family member is not quite on par with assassinating a Dictator, but the undercurrent is the same: The rule of law no longer matters. We may yet be generations away from the leaders of America to openly declare themselves emperors, but this is yet another crucial step towards a system of government in which the “first among equals”, the country’s head of state and head of government, is not really an equal anymore but someone entirely above the law.
One of the secrets of the success of the Roman Empire was the fact that the first emperor, Gaius Octavius, better known by the family name he adopted and the title bestowed upon him by the Roman Senate as Augustus Caesar, was truly competent. I don’t expect competence from Trump. However, is VP, J. D. Vance, is another matter. That gentleman seems frighteningly intelligent and ruthless. Makes me wonder if he is, in fact, going to become the de facto first emperor of an emerging imperial United States of America; our modern-day Octavius.
Oh well, interesting times. Love it, to be honest. Things are about to get really… fascinating.
Thanks for such a… kind of analytics :) or insight. As a foreigner I always struggled with understanding what these two parties are after and how do the manage to keep balance so long, etc.
I naively think democrats and Biden are bit too arrogant and, sorry, stupid by not allowing Ms.Harris to take his place, say, half a year ago. Besides giving her, probably, better chances at elections, this would allow them to issue that “Royal Pardon” without breaking Biden’s promise.
But what I was really curious to ask – is your opinion about the role of Mr. Musk in current US politics. When Trump was elected years ago, there was a lot accusations of “Russian interference” and “Putin’s Puppet” etc – but this time it looks like possible external influence is seriously shadowed by Musk. As I check in wiki, he has 200+ mln followers in twitter and, well, even if quite not all of them are US citizens, this still is quite a percentage of 300 mln population. Does he represent US “business class” discontent with situation of the recent years – or is he just a kind of a talented person who poorly controls himself? And this cryptocurrency boom which, seemingly, is actively instigated/agitated/abused/exploited by the Trump+Musk couple?
I demand separate article on this topic, if possible :) Up to very recent time I had no idea Musk is so involved in politics-making, but now I’m close to thinking he may become “gray cardinal”.
American politics is polarized by several factors: the system of primary elections (which favors strongly partisan voices over middle-of-the-road, compromise-capable politicians), the elected Senate (originally, as in Canada, the upper house was not directly elected, protecting it from the “mob rule” of unfettered democracy; this changed after the Civil War, and did not improve the American body politic) and unconstrained campaign financing. It was within this context that Biden clung to his delusion that he can win another election until it was too late for the Democrats to hold a proper convention; Harris became the nominee of choice and her loss was all but assured.
Concerning Musk, I think he is just one of many successful people in Trump’s entourage who are used, and will be eventually discarded (thrown under the bus, really), by Trump. His number of Twitter followers is likely misleading since he owns Twitter and can manipulate numbers; moreover, many of those followers have actually swore off Twitter. He has become a polarizing figure, vilified by the left, deified by the right; if I dare mention to my left-wing friends that I believe in, and root for, SpaceX, they think I am a Musk fanboy, whereas my right-wing friends look at me rather unkindly when I tell them how I despise Musk’s messianic complex, his attempt at becoming self-appointed free speech champion. Grey eminence he is not; I suspect in the end, he’ll be thought of as a loser, like many others who formerly worked for Trump and sometimes even ended up in jail.
In the end, none of it matters. What matters is how Trump undermines the rule of law by his actions, his appointments; and what he does on foreign policy (in particular, the extent to which he is, or is not, in Putin’s pocket. I suspect not, not because Putin doesn’t have stuff on him but because it’s not relevant anymore; unless the US constitution itself is changed, Trump will not be president again, and therefore, even if Putin reveals that he’s a KGB asset or whatever, Trump is invulnerable. This probably frustrates Putin, too, but that is not necessarily a Good Thing: Putin, cornered by his inability to bring the Ukraine nonsense to a (to him) favorable conclusion, and the possibility that his domestic opposition — powerful people who are hurt the most by his missteps — might take steps to remove him or worse, could prompt Putin to do the unthinkable and, e.g., provoke a direct confrontation with a NATO member state. I shudder at the thought.
Long story short, I expect things to get a lot worse before they get any better.