IN AFGHANISTAN, JOE BIDEN
Animatronic Joe Biden appeared again yesterday afternoon (text here, video below). Speaking in the White House Roosevelt Room, Biden spoke to the votes in the House of Representatives advancing his proposed spending blowout and institutionalization of election fraud. He then turned to our efforts to comply with the deadline set by the Taliban for the American exit from Afghanistan.
One of these things is not like the others. A thoroughgoing falsity nevertheless pervaded the remarks in their entirety, beginning with the bonhomie of “Hello, folks.” (Translation: “Hello, chumps.”) In that sense the remarks hung together beautifully.
The political calculations made by Biden’s minders in the context of our historic national humiliation seem to me jarring and bizarre, but perhaps they are putting Biden’s animatronic gifts to their highest and best use in these performances. His vacant stare and lack of affect have proved their worth.
When he turned to Afghanistan, the script he had been given to read required some translation. Despite his hedging on the deadline, he is sticking to it, as I observed yesterday in “Throughput to August 31.” The input for the throughput will terminate in the output by August 31. We don’t have to tune in to another Pentagon briefing to get clear on that.
The falsity of the remarks is contemptible and disgusting. That he or his minders found it appropriate to take another cheap shot at Donald Trump in this context (“we are already working closely with refugee organizations to rebuild a system that was purposefully destroyed by my predecessor”) is beneath contempt.
Although the press had been called in for his performance, Biden took no questions. He turned his back and skedaddled. The exit gave expressive form to the spectacle that confronts us in Kabul.
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