Post-Thanksgiving Funbag: What Day Is It? Edition
Hunter Biden is pardoned, Kash Patel nominated for FBI director, and a searing account of being homeless in America.
Hunter Biden was pardoned, and I do not blame President Joe Biden one bit.
I am not going to be like Jon Stewart, or my senator Gary Peters, or a bunch of these other Democrats who are throwing a fit about norms and bad examples. To my friends who disagree, I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.
Playing by the rules and being the good guy has done nothing for Democrats. Voters haven’t rewarded them for being responsible or helping working-class people. They elected a convicted felon and sexual abuser to be President, again. They rewarded the racism and fascism of the Republicans by putting them back in power in a clean sweep. Clearly, they don’t care, so why should Joe Biden?
Hunter Biden did some awful, awful things. He also hurt nobody but those who loved him, his family and friends. They were already victimized once by his drug abuse and hooking up with his dead brother’s wife. They were then victimized a second time by a deeply political prosecution that was begun by Trump’s Justice Department, an effort that Joe Biden left alone when he became president. The prosecution went on for nearly three years before finally reaching a plea deal after Hunter had paid his back taxes (which made up the bulk of the charges). A Trump-appointed judge then decided to throw out the deal, and the special prosecutor was then pushed by House Republicans to turn the screws on Hunter Biden, leading to a trial in which the Biden family was dragged through hell, forced to testify about the sorts of depravity that most families deal with in therapy. The entire thing was a five-year long spectacle that most people would not have been put through, especially when they’d undergone rehab and paid the back taxes.
Hunter Biden was about to be sentenced in a couple of weeks, when Donald Trump announced that he was going to fire the FBI Director for the second time and put in his place Kash Patel. Lost in the furor over that decision was that he’s also making Jared Kushner’s father, a man who went to prison for attempting to blackmail his brother with a trafficked woman only to be pardoned by Trump in 2020, ambassador to France.
Kash Patel is an absolute villain. He was part of the coup planning in January 2021. He has said for four years that he wanted to prosecute anyone who was part of the investigation into the coup and the prosecution of the coup participants. He was nearly made Defense Secretary in the final days of the administration, with substantial reporting stating that he was going to write up a declaration of martial law for Trump to seize power. Tellingly, Patel never denied any of it. He will gladly turn the FBI into a Stasi, ready to persecute anyone who dares oppose the Trump administration—and who would charge Hunter Biden again and again on whatever charges he could find, just for funsies.
This is why Joe Biden went back on his public word, and pardoned his son for anything he did within the entire span of time that could be prosecuted. He was protecting his family, and I cannot blame him for that. He was protecting his son against another four years of public crucifixtion by convicted felons and coup plotters who should themselves be in a prison cell. None of those crying about this pardon lifted a finger to stop arming the IDF while it commited genocide for the past year, so spare me the tears for a Hunter Biden pardon, especially since another pardoned Trump family member is getting a high office in the new administration. If the people of this country decided the price of eggs was worth electing fascists who will destroy what’s left of our democracy, then Joe Biden was right to tell the whiny, whinging defenders of norms and good behavior to fuck off.
Esquire magazine ran a feature right before Thanksgiving, a first-person account of being homeless in America by a journalist who has been living out of his car for years. It runs for nine thousand words, one of the most searing, gutting features I’ve ever come across. Even living in a progressive state with better support systems than others (Rhode Island), Patrick Fealey found himself chased away from parking lots by cops who apparently had nothing better to do with their time than to harass him, despite his efforts to visit the police station, speak with the chief, explain how his medical circumstances made it to where he couldn’t afford rent. He followed the chief’s directives to stick to certain locations, and yet, the cops showed up, time after time, waking him up, making him leave, keeping him from getting the rest he sorely needed for his various conditions.
His girlfriend, a relationship he’s managed to hold despite her own difficulties, works for a fancy hotel as a manager. Fourteen years of good service, and still has to live with her parents because she doesn’t make enough to afford housing in the seaside region. She is unable to find a better paying position, and he is homeless because of the cost of his medication. It should be required reading for every person in this country—the most damning indictment of the voracious capitalism that America has been consumed by, creating billionaires who provide nothing of benefit, and a vast underclass of hard workers, talented artists, and many others who are sucked dry, condemned to subsistence.
This is the system that created the inflation we’ve faced the past few years. The cost of groceries that supposedly drove the second election of Trump, well, that’s not got anything to do with the Biden administration. It was driven by companies like Kroger, a grocery behemoth that owns ten other chains beyond its namesake that cleared thirty billion dollars in profits for each of the last three years. It was driven by food suppliers that are all consolidated into ten megacorporations, where nearly every brand of food that is purchased in a grocery store belongs to one of those ten megacorps, all of whom earned their own record profits.
Corporate greed and a for-profit healthcare system made Patrick Fealey and many others like him homeless. Corporate greed and monopolization of the food sector in America drove inflation, and when prices drop, it’ll be because those billionaires running the show will be getting more tax cuts while the Republicans take aim at slashing what remains of the safety net. Social Security and Medicare are set to be gutted under the direction of pasty white supremacist Elon Musk, who also happens to be the wealthiest man in the world.
Happy holidays!