In 1837, Hans Christian Anderson wrote a political satire, “The King’s New Clothes,” highlighting a truth seen by all but expressed by no one, until a small boy makes clear “The emperor has no clothes!” While the visual is hard to take, the same might be said about Joe Biden’s behavior. He is becoming absurd.
Beyond recent discovery of highly classified documents left unprotected in his office and home, an office underwritten by Chinese contributors who effectively covered Biden’s million-dollar salary for doing nothing – a trick he learned from his son – the president is becoming a tragic-comic figure.
After dozens and dozens of outright lies, repeated misstatements of material and checkable fact, and a general sense that he lives in his own reality, he decided last week to take public blather to a new level.
First, he called Republicans “fiscally demented” for observing the nation’s debt – more than $31 trillion dollars – is unsustainable, will bankrupt Social Security and other entitlements unless contained. He then paraded nonsense as fact, pretending fiscal responsibility, and that he has lowered inflation.
To speak as a child of truth to an emperor untethered from it, or unburdened by it, federal government spending for Fiscal Year 2022 was $6.27 trillion dollars, with total revenue of $4.9 trillion, creating a $1.38 trillion deficit. Biden’s Fiscal 2021 deficit was worse, $2.77 trillion.
Inflation meanwhile is “500 percent higher” than it was when Biden took office, which is more than twice as devastating to the consumer as the worst of Jimmy Carter’s inflation – this from a Ways and Means Committee, which also notes Democrat spending is $10 trillion higher than projected.
Put differently, the average American family has lost $7,400 under Biden, as interest rates and inflation followed massive Democrat overspending and termination of key parts of the energy sector. Perhaps more sobering, the downstream effects of this combination include accelerating interest payments on the national debt, rising unemployment, and ricochet inflation, as wage inflation chases price inflation.
Now, adding to the tragic-comic profile of Emperor Biden, and uncourtly trailing courtiers, last week he not only shrugged off a clear criminal violation – secreting highly classified documents in a Chinese-funded office and garage of his open-door home – but took a rank shot at the 2nd Amendment.
In an unprovoked act of anger, senility, or venality, Biden declared that those – presumably including the Founding Fathers – who think an armed citizenry is important, and can dissuade an overreach government from home invasion, are nuts. He says, to beat the federal government, the citizens will need “F-15s and nuclear weapons.”
Now, if I may be so bold, “why – Mr. Emperor, why – would you say such a thing?” Beyond being inflammatory, constitutionally obtuse, and legally off base – since people are allowed to protect their homes and families pursuant to the 2nd and 4th Amendments – what are you saying?
The remark was so off base, so wildly out of place, and so oddly aimed at those who own the 400 million legal firearms in this country, one has to ask – “what is up?” At a time when crime, including homicides, carjackings, and drug trafficking are at records, the border overrun, police down-funded, and women and minorities buying guns in unprecedented numbers, what was the point?
The truth is, like it or not, Biden often has no point – just a bunch of left-leaning dispositions, random recall of what may be internal White House prejudices, and a tendency to showcase mis-wired, mixed up, and inappropriately angry thoughts – a bunch of sparking synapses, which lead observers to wonder.
Funny enough, or maybe this too is tragic, one of the scholarly reviews of that old Hans Christian Anderson tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” notes that the author was pointing to a kind of collective public delusion, denial, or fear of saying the truth. At least among the President’s own party that seems to be in play.
Wrote the Anderson scholar not so long ago, the tale highlights willful – sometimes dangerous – “pluralistic ignorance,” a situation in which “no one believes, but everyone believes that everyone else believes” or “everyone is ignorant to whether the emperor has clothes on or not, but believes that everyone else is not ignorant.”
I would simplify. We all know Biden is in trouble. No one believes he is sharp as a tack mentally or emotionally. Nor do many think that anyone else believes he is firing on all cylinders. Nor are we ignorant of his obvious, recurring, accelerating loss of focus, orientation, concentration, or capacity.
In short, Biden falls embarrassingly short of what is expected of any intellectually engaged, cogent, responsible, anti-inflammatory, let alone honest, leader. We all know this. We all have the wisdom of a child on this one. The emperor has no clothes. What we do not know is where that goes.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
