They're Shocked, Shocked!

Last night I was stuggling thbough one of those dreams where I start to suspect I'm dreaming, but the dream keeps going on so long that I decide maybe I had it wrong, maybe this is real life after all. When I finally did wake up, I realized with a start how many of the quasi-realist Edward Hopper's paintings, especially those with people in them, are actually dream images. Forget Salvador Dali, check out Edward Hopper.

Then it occurred to me how many people seem to be reacting to Joe's pardoning his wayward son Hunter a little as though they're waking up from a dream.

It's been a strange six months.

First, Biden wasn’t “sharp as a tack.” He was sick and diminished. Next, Trump wasn’t a Nazi: He’s the president-elect of the United States with a majority mandate. Record numbers of blacks, Hispanics, and 65% of Native Americans supported him. Kamala Harris was a lousy candidate, wasted billions of dollars, and owes her #2 position to her ethnicity and gender. And finally, it’s now perfectly clear that Joe Biden was lying about never pardoning Hunter Biden.

But this neglects all the dream images that extend farther back, the Kafka-like prosecutions, the delusional E Jean Carroll having rape fantasies about Donald Trump in his younger days, Fani Willis and her boyfriend, the Red Queen penalties and the threats of Rikers Island, the Butler assassination attempt and the visuals of rebirth -- it's been quite a year, not just six monmths, and we're still assimilating it. This tweet comes a little closer to the issues:

There’s a ton to be said on the Hunter pardon, but for now:

The real worrisome part about the undeniable fact that the First Family (not just Hunter!) was so flamboyantly corrupt was that the entirety of the government legal and intelligence apparatus worked overtime to let it…

— Mike Howell (@MHowellTweets) December 2, 2024

There are other good questions:

The timing of the pardon is also notable. It comes before Hunter’s sentencing and hours before Joe exits the country for a few days with his numbskull White House Press Secretary who, just a couple of weeks ago, assured us Hunter would not benefit with a pardon.

. . . Joe obviously wanted to pardon Hunter before his sentencing. This trip to Africa was likely planned in advance to get Joe and his dim-witted press secretary out of the country at the same time. . . But here’s what I’m most curious about.

What about Joe Biden? What about Joe’s brother James?

. . . You see, by pardoning Hunter, Joe made himself and his brother even more vulnerable to prosecution. Because there is no longer any legal jeopardy for Hunter, Hunter cannot plead the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.

. . . In less than a month, the media misinformed their residual customers on two of the biggest stories of the last few years: Trump’s comeback and this appalling pardon. Will these residual customers ever get tired of having absolutely no idea what’s going on or what will happen? Kamala’s in the lead. Joe will never pardon Hunter. The border is secure. Inflation is transitory. Violent crime has decreased.

There's a whole frammis that's collapsing here -- but there's even potentially a lot more. I've been posting that we know almost nothing about the discussions that took place among Obama, Pelosi, and Harris about Joe's cognitive decline -- not that it was any surprise to them, but that even with the help of the media, it could no longer be covered up.

It's hard to avoid thinking that for whatever reason, they planned on the basis that the coverup could continue as it had indefinitely, but maybe down the road, after Joe's re-election, they could invoke the 25th Amendment and put Kamala in without any fuss. That had probably been wired in for quite some time.

Once it became clear the coverup wouldn't work any longer, but it was too late to have primaries, they had to cobble up a whole new Plan B from scratch. I think Kamala was in on this, and she knew she was the planned successor all along. The need for an actual campaign and election caught everyone by surprise. Will we ever learn more?

Who was actually running the country while Joe was doddering at the beach? We know next to nothing about this. Who's running the country now, for that matter, once Joe has skedaddled to Angola?

By the way, what happened with that whole 2020 election? Seems lile a big part of the past year was almost a national recognition that we got things wrong in that election, and we got a do-over. Maybe the J6ers had a point, huh?

This is going to be a long process.