When the 2020 Democratic primary debates kicked off in the summer of 2019, it was apparent that Joe Biden had lost a mental step or two in the few years that he had been out of the spotlight. Never one of the greatest political orators in American history, he was more gaffe-prone than ever when his infamous "basement campaign" began.
He didn't have to worry. The Democrats' flying monkeys in the mainstream media got right to work on creating and reporting on a Joe Biden who not only didn't exist at the time, but who had never existed. Despite almost half a century's-worth of examples of Biden being divisive, bitter, aggressive, and somewhere on the other side of socially awkward, leftists in the media crafted a Joe Biden who was calm, unifying, and a brilliant public speaker.
As I've said many a times, it's the largest ongoing creative fiction writing exercise I've ever seen.
Biden's cognitive functioning has been declining at a feverish pace before our eyes since he was sworn in, and it's gotten worse in the past year. There have been members of the mainstream media — both "reporters" and opinion writers — who have abandoned their advocacy obligations to the Democratic National Committee and admitted that Biden isn't quite all there anymore.
That's so last year though.
The presidential election year is finally upon us, and Biden's approval ratings are somewhere in the Mariana Trench, so the MSM hacks have their marching orders. Get ready for almost a full year of reading about a Joe Biden who bears no resemblance whatsoever to the guy who walks around in circles after speeches because he no longer understands what "Exit" signs mean.
Jesse Wegman, who is a member of The New York Times editorial board, published an Opinion piece on Monday that came out of the gate in the most ridiculous fashion I've seen in a long time:
“What a sick … My God.”
President Biden offered many eloquent turns of phrase on the importance and the fragility of democracy in his well-crafted campaign kickoff speech on Friday near Valley Forge, Pa. But it was this brief, unfinished aside — off-script, sandwiched around an extended silence during which the president clenched his fists in an effort to resist uttering the curse behind his teeth — that best captured the exasperating reality he, along with a majority of the country, struggles to cope with as we enter an election year unlike any in American history.
To begin with, anyone who seriously believes that Joe Biden is "eloquent" is not trafficking in the truth. There is simply no way to get from the meandering, babbling Biden we repeatedly see to eloquence, no matter how much Adderall they pump into him before they throw him in front of a teleprompter.
Where this really veers off into bad tabloid land is when Wegman reads so much into Biden's "unfinished aside." The idea that the moment was dripping with poignance and significance is just laughable.
Biden glitches during virtually every public appearance now. There are times when he rattles off paragraphs that are unintelligible. The odds aren't very good that one of his confused pregnant pauses was cloaking something deep. Even back when he wasn't spacing out in public, Biden didn't offer a lot in the way of hefty intellectual fare.
Because he's on the Times' editorial board, Wegman isn't just a member of the coastal media bubble, he exists in a bubble within the bubble. These are people who develop rashes and chronic incontinence if brought within three blocks of anyone who has a differing political opinion. He has no problem spinning Joe Biden as a combination of Aristotle and Patrick Henry because he will never encounter anyone who questions the fiction.
Wegman manages to become less honest and more nonsensical as the column goes on. All of the talking points are hit, the J6 fanfic fetish duties are attended to, and then, because nothing is real in this guy's world, his conclusion is more fantastical than his opening paragraphs:
In that sense, democracy is like vaccines. Few people today have firsthand memories of the horrors of diseases that were rampant before vaccines largely eradicated them, which makes it easier for vaccine hesitancy to take root. Similarly, when a country has no history of living under a dictatorship, it can be easier to lose sight of what it means to live in a representative democracy, and to be caught flat-footed when a real authoritarian comes knocking.
Yes, Jesse Wegman, democracy is just like vaccines. And armadillos. Maybe super similar to shoe leather too, as long as we're just making things up.
The first eight days of 2024 have been the longest six months of my life.
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