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To metaphorically do in America, what Mussolini had done in Agro Pontino, would be a big task. To do it in an unfair manner is trivial, and there exist sufficient precedent, but doing it justly requires institutions uncaptured by partisans.
Trump was indicted in what many considered, in the absense of prosecution of Bidens or Clintons, selective enforcement. That a thorough investigation of Donald would probably discover he violated some statue would be admitted by many of his supporters, but they would add that so did other polticians of his rank but who didn't
But now news has come in Biden's son has been indicted for a second time (first was for gun possesion) for evading 1.4M USD (14.6M SEK) of federal taxes. Despite being filed in today the stronghold of Democrats, the inditement pulls no punches in describing Hunter's lifestyle, claiming that he spent money on "drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes".
With this step family members of important politicians of both American political parties are facing justice. Perhaps Hunter knows more than he lets on and it will be both candidates for US president in 2020 who are suspects. In such a case the US could said to be a tragic country if criminality is so common in the ruling classes, a democratic one if no one is above the law, or an oligarchic one if there exist factions divorced from democratic oversight able and willing to besmirch beyond repair the reputation of any politician.
But if the middle option is true, and this the few unrighteous in high places made low due to their unrighteousness (and not for coming into conflict with the deep state), the metaphorical Wermacht is always a danger. A former ally of amelioration and reclamation now undoing the hard work for short-term gains. This role could be played by judges finding guilty politicians innocent due to having political opinions similar to those accused, temporarily strengthening their party but in the long term promote rot in the republic.
I really do feel bad for Joe regarding Hunter. He doesn’t appear to have been a particularly awful father. Reminds me of a conversation we were having with @raggedy_anthem last week, sometimes you just get an asshole failson, but then what do you do? You can’t not love them, not provide for them. Good parents hide bad children from the law, sacrifice their careers, even their lives, for them. I can’t be too mad at the participants in the college admissions scandal, who did after all only want the same advantage for their kids that the super rich get by being on the college’s board of trustees.
Regarding Trump, it’s both trivially true that the Democrats are out to get him and obvious that he doesn’t help himself and has engaged in shady conduct throughout his career without much care for the consequences. So what do you do? Moldbug suggests that rightists essentially ignore some corruption and venality in (reactionary) elites because, in the grand scheme of things, a king who skims off the top but who does what you want is always better than an incorruptible bureaucrat who doesn’t, let alone a corrupt one who doesn’t.
Others would say it matters. There are two main reasons why the Swiss have largely abandoned their vaunted neutrality over the last 25 years. The first is, of course, that the SEC, IRS and wider US government effectively threatened to destroy the Swiss banking sector if they didn’t kowtow to them. But the second, perhaps as significant, is that the Swiss started paying the price for their participation in various shadiness abroad. Huge corruption in politics (beyond what was previously considered standard), in public sector contracting, in banking, the growing influence of the Moroccan, Italian and Albanian mafias in Swiss politics and public life, things that ordinary Swiss had to pay for. The idea that one could deal with and bribe anyone abroad without concern for morality while maintaining a high-trust, low-corruption society at home was suddenly no longer as obvious as it had once been.
I think Joe was an awful father to his sons. He used them as props after their mother died. He pushed his known drug addled son into “the family business.” What kind of dad pushes his clearly incompetent son into business with Eastern European oligarchs to make dad a buck or two?
The way that the political grift game works it was simply unnecessary to push Hunter onto the shady Eastern European oligarchs. As I say, Biden could make more in a single speech to an above-board ‘reputable’ US think tank, [major bank’s] annual ‘global leaders summit’ that they use to entice client CEOs into attending to pitch business at etc than Hunter would make in a year, and that’s likely even if he wasn’t a fuckup and followed the rules. Joe doesn’t want to be poor (and there are stories in Delaware of some small scale grift, I think someone here collated them), but he’s never expressed Clinton or Obama or Pelosi-tier financial ambitions.
If anything, it seems more likely looking at Hunter’s career that Joe consistently intervened to try to find employment for his son so he could try to make some of ‘his own’ money rather than doing nothing. Again, that’s hardly ‘not corrupt’, but I don’t think it suggests that Biden ordered him to do it.
I tend to agree with this take. I don't think Joe was pushing Hunter on anyone to make bucks for Joe, I think Hunter was not averse to using his perceived connections when shady oligarchs offered him plum jobs with big salaries to do nothing (but hook us up with your dad the Vice President of the USA, okay?).
I think Joe is guilty of protecting Hunter past the point where he should have been left to face the consequences of his fuck-up lifestyle, but every family will act according to their own notion of unconditional or tough love.
"10% for the Big Guy" isn't nothing. If I got 10% of my son's wages, I would rather he not work at a pizza place and might encourage him to aim higher.
Lots of parents would push their kids to aim higher than working at a pizza place, if they had an education and family network contacts. Look, the Bidens are their own family and unless there's evidence that Joe stole government money and gave it to Hunter, or vice versa, what goes on is none of our business.
Taking 10% of money that you know, I know, the dogs in the street know, Hunter is going to spend like a drunken sailor on leave is only prudent, so the guy won't be left absolutely penniless. There has to be sorted out is this a bribe or is it just Hunter being a little bitch about Dad taking his allowance away or what, but that's what all the court cases are about.
If Hunter is obtaining his money illegally, Joe knows this, and Joe is taking 10%, that's enough to materially implicate Joe right there. It doesn't matter that Joe is taking the money for Hunter's benefit.
Yes obviously, but it affects the morality of it substantially if (a) Joe isn’t doing it for his personal enrichment, which is obvious and (b) his involvement relates solely to his attempt at preventing Hunter from immediately wasting all his income. In the same way, the morality of Trump keeping those classified documents after he left office depends quite substantially on whether he forgot them or whether he took them with the intention of selling them to a foreign power, for example.
There isnt a logical basis to cast Hunter’s Eastern European dealings as an attempt by Joe to enrich himself because ex-VPs can make more money in a single speech to Blackstone’s annual blah blah summit than Hunter ever made ‘being corrupt’. The numbers don’t check out, Biden can easily make $20m+ in his first year out of office.
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