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Any Random Person
William F. Buckley was famous for saying, among other things, that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. This was an understandable thing to say given the intransigent ideologues who tend to inhabit Ivy League faculties. A random collection of Americans are likely to be far more congenial.
I was sitting at my desk this morning pondering the weekend events, which amounted to a continuous stream of Biden faux pas culminating in an ad-lib announcement of his view that Putin had to go. This set off a flurry of nervous disavowals from all across Europe, the US State Department, and eventually from the White House itself. It should be obvious by now, to anyone who is paying even a modicum of attention, that the President of the United States is a buffoon. He may be an inveterate grifter. He may even have dementia. But he is definitely as dumb as a bag of hair.
It’s a weird world we live in, where any random person plucked off the street of any town in America, would almost certainly be more intelligent and more competent to perform the actual presidential duties than the man who was voted for by millions of those same Americans. I offer no opinion about whether he actually won the election. I just marvel at how stupid he is, and the irrelevance of his manifest stupidity to the voting behavior of millions of his constituents.
Now, what I myself may think of President Doofus is completely inconsequential. But there are people and entities with more sinister agendas who know a complete knucklehead when they see one. And they are unlikely to let such a nitwit president go to waste. Events in Ukraine are probably only the first of several disasters we should expect to have visited upon the world due to our buffoonish leadership. The kid running the espresso machine at Starbucks would give the bad guys more pause than the blockhead who currently occupies the White House.
I’m ready, now, for the times we live in to be far less interesting.
Published in General
Worse than Slow-Joe just being dumb is that he seems to think he is the smartest person in the room.
I was telling my wife yesterday that it is difficult to separate what may be his stupidity from his dementia . He had the good luck for most of his career to be ignored by the media. He was always “old Joe the guy that makes a lot of gaffes”. So now it’s kind of difficult to separate whether we’re looking at the real Joe Biden, lack of intellect, or the real Joe Biden, victim of dementia. Or both but in what degree for each?
How someone like Biden could rise to the Presidency is a metaphysical question for the ages. But I’d still rather have him than Hillary.
Ego, in Biden’s case, is incongruous with intelligence. In fact, it seems to have an inverse relationship. But yesterday’s comments on Putin were a surprise to everyone. Inappropriate, daft, incendiary even. Our only defense is to point to the source and his obvious deficits, which is sad. If it weren’t for Kamala, we’d all be calling for removal under the 25th Amendment.
Isn’t that the signature mark of being dumb?
See: Dunning-Kruger Effect.
After looking at the news coverage on Ukraine for the last two weeks, I think this was the only thing Joe Biden has ever said that I agree with completely.
Putin is a sadistic monster. He is destroying the life’s work of millions of Ukraine citizens in some kind of sinister plot to make Zelenskyy surrender. Putin is killing and torturing the people Zelenskyy loves while he has Zelenskyy tied to a chair and forced to watch. I pray Zelenskyy is surrounded by people who help him get through this and that they continue to fight Putin with everything Ukraine has to fight with. If Putin makes Zelenskyy give in, Putin will be just as hard on the Ukraine citizens afterward. Any monster who would drive millions of people from their homes is someone who cannot trusted in peace.
In my opinion, Joe Biden is right. The only thing I don’t understand is why Joe and I are the only two people on the planet who agree on this.
The Left (and Biden in particular) used to criticize Trump for not saying personal insults to Putin. I assume Trump, who likes to insult people, held back because the State Department told him not to say bravado, because that causes international problems–speak softly and carry a big stick. Biden on the other hand has insulted Putin, called for regime change to box him a corner, taunted him with Ukraine joining NATO and gave him a green light for a small incursion. Biden’s words effectively made this war happen and all those dead on are him too. Biden thinks he is reliving the Corn Pop fish tale, but now there are nuclear implications. Also, 100 million people will stave to death this year, because Joe “take him behind the gym” Biden could not keep his trap shut. But no mean Tweets.
I would guess that a lot of people agree that the world would be better if Putin were to assume room temperature but still think it is stupid for the president to say it out loud.
I agree. Biden “has to go” too. So much of the suffering in Ukraine and the coming suffering in the year ahead across the globe are on him.
These are just two ordinary human beings. They aren’t special. They need to go.
It is one thing to wish Putin gone and another for a head of state to make a statement to that effect. If leaders are to be judged by their words, this is like saying “we’re taking Putin out.” The man is already paranoid, is reported to have employed tasters, and now he thinks Biden has spun up DEVGROUP for an assassination attack. It’s nuts. Biden is nuts.
They both need to go and Harris, Pelosi and Trudeau with them.
If Biden is replaced, odds are we get somebody better for America. If Putin is replaced, it is a crap shoot. Who takes power? The strongest, badest dude? It is good to think a few moves ahead.
Darn it, @keithlowery you beat me to it. Here is the link I would have offered, at least Biden doesn’t have lemon juice rubbed all over his face:
https://youtu.be/4FGnb2lgPBA
You’re right, I’m sure. It’s a good thing for everyone I’m not in charge. :-)
And he surely got elected by being the best man for the job.
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/28/report-255000-excess-votes-for-biden-in-key-battleground-states-n542120
@marcin
I agree with this sentiment in general – Putin is a bad guy and the world would be better off if he would go away somehow. But it is exceedingly unwise for the president of the United States to say such things out loud in public. Among other things, it destroys any incentive Putin might otherwise have had to make peace. It gives him no way out other than escalating the violence. Even if the U.S. goal is regime change – I don’t think it is – it should leave Putin in some doubt about its intentions just to leave the door open for him to believe that he could personally survive a decision for peace.
He and others like him are not blind to the fate of those like, say, Muammar Gadaffi in Libya, who laid down their arms based on U.S. assurances that turned out to be essentially worthless. My point is not a sympathetic one toward the Gadaffi’s of the world – he was a slug. But it is important to avoid foreclosing the belief by bad actors that they can personally survive the making of peace. Otherwise, total war becomes their only hope. Comments like Biden made only prolong war and desolation.
It’s not a big deal, but I didn’t include the term “Serial plagiarist” in my original comment. :-)
I don’t think Putin is just “a bad guy.” My opinion is that he is far worse than we want to believe. Biden was stupid to make the remark, for all the reasons you suggest. I do agree with that. And why would you warn your enemy that you were coming for him? Since no sane person would do such a stupid thing, Putin will simply laugh.
But the remark does demean Putin in others’ eyes, and that’s a good thing. It doesn’t affect Putin. He is getting puffed up by the international press. He loves it. It empowers him, the fear he has stoked. He is a terrorist. But Biden’s remark in a way puts Putin on a normal-human scale, and it makes him into a person we can deal with, rather than our seeing him as a maniacal inhuman monster we simply run away from.
We are treating Putin with a deference that comes from fear of his nuclear weapons. That gives him a superiority that is truly dangerous.
Our letting him have Ukraine so he won’t attack us makes the western world look weak and conquerable. We are not dealing with him the right way. We are placating him, and he is using our actions to simply buy time and shore up his attack. He has all the wealth and materiel of China behind him. He is laughing at our paltry sanctions.
@marcin
There’s a hilarious story behind “serial plagiarist”. I have a web browser extension I wrote some time ago that, based on rules supplied by a server I run, makes silent modifications to every web page a user visits. I usually forget it’s even running on my laptop. The “About” info on my extension is included in this response. It explains the general idea.
Anyway, under the current rules, wherever it sees, say, “Kamala Harris”, it will replace her name in the article either with “***she who must not be named***” or “Kamala Harris, who slept her way to statewide office”. With Joe Biden one of the things it will do is preface his name with “serial plagiarist”. I think when I replied to your comment, the injected “serial plagiarist” was automatically picked up, and I’m so used to it I didn’t even notice.
It’s a fun thing to have this running on my laptop because it annotates mainstream media articles with uncomfortable (for lefties) clarifying comments. It just looks like the article was written that way.
So, sorry for misquoting you but it was completely unintentional. I’ll have to pay more attention in the future to how clicking “reply” includes text I might not have intended.
I love your web browser extension. :-) Too funny.
I wasn’t going to say anything because I agree with the change. It just felt a little weird to read it because I didn’t actually say it. :-)
There are folks across the political spectrum who think the same about Biden.
There is a term that is new to me, anosognosia. Would it be useful in describing the President? Perhaps our mental and health professionals could comment.
The shameful part is to see this happening to others caused by these two.
There are studies that show 75% of people believe they are above average. What isn’t understood stood is that half of them are wrong.
I bet the people at the Dispatch and The Bulwark would not agree with WFB
One of my favorite comments was that some people get twenty years of experience. Others get one year of experience twenty times.
Can you give the source for that?
No. It’s been too long and I don’t remember. I suspect it was from the early days of the internet when everyone was passing around jokes and humor files.