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The uproar about Hunter Biden always felt farcical. From Clinton's emails to Mar a lago documents.
Temporary talking points and weapons that you're supposed to look down on for the enemy but the other way when it's your team.
Typical political shitflinging. It means nothing, was noise, is noise, and will continue to be noise. Useful for filling the air and giving the playmakers background latitude, however.
Hunter Biden wasn't farcical inherently, the DOJ's handling of his cases were. They decided to go for the least important crimes he committed, the gun, the taxes, and ignore FARA and anything else that put the microscope anywhere near Joe (see also the total lack of investigation into the classified documents found in Joe's garage, basement, and Chinese-funded university office). Hunter has never been about Hunter any more than busting any street dealer for dope is about that dealer. The target of a legitimate investigation is the Biden crime family whos head and chief operating officer was, for most of the most know relevant potential crimes, vice-president Joe Biden. Joe ran an open air corruption market getting his failson sinecures in return for official government acts, as well as his brother, and his wife.
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Joe built his political career on peddling political influence to foreign nationals. Hunter was both the ultimate proof, and a terrible distraction because Republicans couldn't close the sale. It looked like political cornball. If this had been 60's, this would have dwarfed Watergate. But nobody cares anymore because every politician does it, and every politician does it because nobody cares.
Sadly, selling out Americans and the working class has been a pasttime of the oligarchy for the last 60 years, agreed.
Hopefully tariffs will begin to reverse the trend, but we will see!
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There is considerable evidence that Hunter was selling access to Joe. That is, by itself, quite illegal and highly objectionable.
It gets worse when "illegitimate foreign influence" has been a consistent talking point against Trump and anyone else who went against the Blue Tribe policy consensus.
It gets worse when Trump was impeached for attempting to direct the justice department to investigate the evident corruption.
It gets worse when the Justice Department evidently slow-walked investigations and attempted to cut sweetheart deals to provide political advantage to Biden.
It gets worse when The federal government and state governments have been bending and outright breaking laws in an attempt to destroy Trump legally and politically.
It gets worse when this is not a recent problem, and in fact Trump made opposition to it central to his campaign in 2016.
The media is, of course, in no hurry to assemble the facts into a coherent, easily-digestable normiefeed narrative. That doesn't change the weight of the actual facts. There is path dependence here, and the result is that you will never, ever get trust and cooperation across the aisle in this area ever again.
Do you think Kushner soliciting billions of dollars in Saudi money while Middle East envoy (almost certainly for a word in Trump’s ear) is corruption that deserves to be investigated? Everybody seems to do this.
Damn, that sounds pretty bad. I wonder why no one ever bothered to look into that? Hunter Biden pretty clearly engaged in money laundering and tax evasion in an attempt to conceal earnings from his illegal activities. Did Kushner do that? If so, why has he not been charged?
...On a deeper level, it seems that this topic highlights a salient difference between our perspectives. I do not "trust the system". I am opposed to the "manipulation of procedural outcomes." I am in fact opposed to corruption, but at the moment it seems to me that corruption is best opposed through an adversarial process, not a cooperative one. I think Biden's corruption is best prevented by Republicans prosecuting him. I think Trump's corruption is best prosecuted by Democrats prosecuting him. The Democrats have shot their wad, and have nothing to show for it. Now I want to see the Republicans take a good, honest swing. I am not swayed by arguments that "everyone does it", because I have observed that these appeals to informal "norms" are one of the primary mechanisms by which procedural outcomes are manipulated. If Kushner is corrupt, which I do not particularly believe, Democrats have had ample opportunity to prosecute him and their failure to do so is their own failing. It seems to me that the best path toward low corruption is to enforce the laws fairly but mercilessly against Democrats where my side is able, and trust self-interest to compel Democrats to do the same to my side where they are able. To the extent that corruption has been normalized among our elites, with a common understanding that a blind eye should be turned to bribery and influence-selling, defecting on that understanding seems like an excellent way to break it for good. And since that understanding seems entirely against the public interest, this seems like a good thing to do.
This logic has been a huge part of the value of Trump generally, in my eyes. We all knew the system was corrupt, but no one involved was interested in burning their own meal ticket, and so all involved cooperated in maintaining and concealing the corruption. The solution was to feed the system something it couldn't cooperate with, and this has worked astonishingly well. The system can conceal its corruption and it can suppress attacks on its legitimacy, but it can't do both at the same time while also fighting a war with itself. And so, we see the perceived legitimacy of large parts of the system outright collapsing, and direct attacks on major institutions are now within the Overton window.
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As i said, mostly noise.
If you think broad-based consensus on the legitimacy of the justice system's interactions with politicians isn't something that we should consider terribly important, then sure. It's not as though such questions have been a chronic flashpoint for the Culture War over the last decade. I'm sure it'll be fine.
If your reality predicts collapsism stemming from the Hunter Biden Pardon, go for it, it is your reality, and a useful rhetorical weapon.
So look, you can take the position you do, but engage in good faith, don't snarkily dismiss people as "living in their own reality." I am annoyed by this comment not because you're being rude to @FCfromSSC (he can take it, and he and I don't agree on much politically) but because it is the sort of comment that's been flying a lot lately, the Twitter-dunk, the dismissive "Wow," the failure to engage except to the minimum degree necessary to snidely express your contempt.
Don't do this.
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