https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/09/missouri-v-biden-july-4-ruling-is-poetic-justice-case-of-tipple-for-the-judge/
At some point in this column, I have probably had occasion to quote these famous lines from Walter Scott’s poem “Marmion”:
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive.”
In another, better world, I like to think, the Bidens and their protectors and puppet masters would ruefully be contemplating Scott’s admonitory observation.
In this world, however, I suspect that—until quite recently, anyway—they had smugly sided with J.R. Pope’s sly amendment to Scott’s moralizing couplet:
“But when we’ve practiced for a while
How vastly we improve our style.”
I note that Pope’s amusing title for his opuscule is “A Word of Encouragement.”
Many of us feel a great contradiction at the heart of the Biden phenomenon.
On the one hand, he—“Big Guy” Joe—and his entire Snopes-like family—coke-head Hunter, “Dr.” Jill, the litter of grasping, on-the-make siblings—all seem like ciphers, the veritable incarnation of Gertrude Stein’s description of Oakland, CA: “there’s no there there.”
Indeed, from this point of view, Joe’s painful mental and, increasingly, physical vacancy seems to be the objective correlative for the entire Biden enterprise. It’s as if the nasty brother of the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz suddenly came to life and occupied the White House. “If I only had a brain,” he snarls softly to himself, frightening everyone around him.
And that “as if” brings me to the extraordinary “other hand.” Joe Biden is president of the United States, still, if just barely, the most important political office in the world. Amazing. How could that be? Talk about going from zero to one!