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Their Lies: An Opportunity
Gilligan and his fellow castaways – trapped on an island because of something Trump did
Putting aside the veracity of this claim (and there is none), it illustrates an interesting attribute of Biden’s mode of lying as well as the complicity on both sides of the aisle in handing out a free pass. To start with, there is no credible argument to be made that Congress’ rollback of various regulations under Trump had anything to do with SVB’s failures. The reasons underlying SVB’s misfortunes are rather well understood and have been explained elsewhere in grand fashion. While there is considerable bipartisan agreement that these rollbacks had no effect upon SVB’s maladies, ranging as it does from Barney Frank to Larry Kudlow, such evidence, such as it is, is admittedly merely argument by authority.
But put aside the dubious veracity of Biden’s claim. There is always an opportunity for clarity (read: winning the argument) when someone lies. As alluded to earlier, Biden has a particular style of lying. It is at one common to all con men and unique in its application. To wit, Biden will say anything, ANYTHING, in the moment to get to the next moment. Truth be damned. Plausibility be damned. It is the brazen nature of such lies that are the key to their success. Depending on the crowd, Biden each day as a child attended mass before attending synagogue before attending a black church while growing up as a Puerto Rican. Four lies, four different crowds. The present instance is made only slightly less certain as Biden failed to start his comments with, “You know, my dad once said to me, Joey …” nor did it end with, “My word as a Biden.”
He views each lie as a separate episode of Gilligan’s Island. Every week, the intrepid castaways would come within inches of getting off that island only to make some stupid mistake. But they never in the next week’s episode simply repeated their previous plan and corrected the mistake. Nope. Rather, each week was a stand alone instance of their multiverse in which there was no knowledge to be gleaned from past actions.
Which brings us to SVB. The decision tree flowing from Biden’s utterance writes itself. Or rather, it is a two-by-two matrix wherein each entry represents Biden lying or believing his own BS AND Trump’s complicity being true or false. In this situation, the best outcome for Biden is that he believes this clearly contrived explanation and – miracle of miracles – it is the result of Trump’s actions in some manner. Remember, this is the best scenario. Well, someone needs to ask Biden, “If you saw the error in the Trump era rollback and your party had the House and the Senate for your first two years in office and did nothing to fix the problem you have so clearly said you were aware of, then how is this Trump’s fault? He might have been negligent but you just admitted to purposely exposing Americans to harm. Right?”
Where is this follow-up question? Why has no one made Biden own the logical conclusion that flows from his weasel words? Every new day is the dawn of a new episode of the KJP show on the DEI network. But we can remember yesterday’s episode. Push the advantage.
For what it is worth, I believe that the failure of SVB was predictable and has well-known causes none of which are the result of Congressional action during Trump’s administration. Returning to the matrix, there are therefore two likely scenarios: Trump innocent and Biden lying or Trump innocent and Biden believing his BS. The first of these rings true as I highly suspect that the thinking at the White House went no deeper than “Hey, this looks bad. Did anything happen to banking regulations before we got here? Anything? Yes? Don’t need to know the details. We are blaming it on that. Write it up.” The second instance is arguably worse, as it means that Biden really believes what he said. The collapse of SVB could potentially portend a system wide weakness in the banking system that could spread. Having a president too stupid to understand anything not presented to him in coloring book format is like going into surgery and finding out that your doctor is Dr. Jill Biden.
Regardless, the die was cast when Biden picked his poison. The lack of regulations caused this mess, he knew it beforehand, and he worked with his majorities in Congress for two years to stymie any correction that would have saved Americans from this dark danger. Make him own it. It’s the forced ownership that brings an end to the con.
Published in General
The biggest problem is the lack of time and opportunity to ask him questions. And if they got around to it, he might just say, “What bank failure?”
Biden in a nutshell. But the press are in on the con.
Excellent post.
I roll my eyes every time he says this. I don’t think there are many people who say, “I was skeptical at first, but he gave his word as a Biden. It must be true!”
Charles Cooke has an excellent segment with John Cochrine on his podcast…very much worth the listen!!!
I am a long time fan of Charles Cooke. I find his podcast to be a bit hit or miss though trending in the hit direction. I wish he would have an episode each month on the Beatles – like a sorbet to cleanse the political op-ed palette with his erudite exposition of all things fab four.
I really like the show, but I do usually skip through the sports segments.
Listening to Biden talk about anything reminds me of:
Q: “How do you know he’s lying?”
Answer: “His lips are moving.”
It’s entirely pointless and adversly affects my blood pressure.
And we’re all becoming numb to it. “Yeah, there he goes – lying again.”
On the other hand, I’ve become necessarily more spiritual – seeking help from our Creator. And perhaps that’s the silver lining to this challenge in our fallen world?
I think there’s a third option: Biden speaks what he will regardless of whether it’s true or not. Some of us may classify this as lying, but the speech itself is not intended to be true or false, but expedient — that is the possibility of truthfulness does not enter into consideration at all — but is merely intended for some other effect.
Personally, I consider any speech that is intended to ignore and to distract from the point, and to confuse someone else is lying. Others may disagree.
Sadly, I think the problem may run a little deeper. Do you think Joe was lying when he said his son died in Iraq? That his wife was killed by a drunk driver? That he was arrested in South Africa for standing against apartheid? That Mandela thanked him for the bravery of an act that happened only in his mind? That his house burned down with his family in it? That he gave his uncle a purple heart? I could go on. I think, in his mind, he remembers these occurrences as clear as day. He has not been “with” us for some time now.
Exactly. It’s a flip of the coin as to whether any particular untruth from Biden is an intentional lie or a false memory. It is funny, though, how Biden never misremembers something that casts him in a negative light. He’s usually the hero or the victim in his stories, never the guy who [expletived] things up, to quote Barack Obama.
good post Jack. I am tending toward option 2. This guy is so stupid he cannot comprehend that he just told a lie. All in his imagination.
I really think my favorite of all time is the Cornpop saga. It couldn’t have more holes than the Jessie Smollett saga if Cornpop declared “this is MAGA country.” So, if I understand it, Cornpop was waiting to kill Joey for something he said while swimming, because homicidal inner city thugs spend their days yelling “Cannon ball!” at the neighborhood municipal pool. Unlikely. Even in the old west. But then Joey gets ready to face his nemesis. He doesn’t call the cops, even though he expects to be murdered. Because, you know, life is cheap in Delaware. But just before he heads out, the wise Morgan Freeman character from central casting (where did he come from) cuts Joey a length of chain. Wait. What? Where did the chain come from. And how did he cut it. Was that his job? Cutting chain at the municipal pool? For just such an occasion? And a chain? Is this a gladiator fight? WTF. In the end, Joey teaches a lesson like every low budget Michelle Pfeiffer movie where she goes into the inner city to teach and ends up the student who realizes that rap is just another form of poetry.
He was a bad dude.
Also, asking such questions would require the questioner to engage with where a policy leads beyond its immediate effects into follow-on effects (“second order thinking” and preferably third and fourth order too). Leftists (and most of the media is populated with leftists) have demonstrated over a number of years that they do not engage in deep thinking that would enable thinking about follow-on effects. (Otherwise they wouldn’t be leftists, since all leftist policies fail when they come into contact with their own follow-on effects.)
Classic Biden move–blame Trump while sending the tax payers money to payoff his corrupt friends.
Well, this gets to whether Biden genuinely thought he remembered all his law school representations. He was a relatively young man then. Are we to blame his declining mental processes for that as well?
To answer you, I think he was certainly lying.
Point taken. I would simply point out that two things can be true at once. Is Nancy Pelosi evil or stupid? Yes and Yes. AOC? Ditto. I think sometimes Joey lies and often, after years of telling the lies, he comes to believe them. Cheers.
Biden only wants to feel like he won the immediate moment. If he needs a new lie he will deny ever uttering this one–and could probably pass a polygraph while doing so. A zillion years in the Senate gets one used to bloviating without contradiction by laymen.
The Gilligan’s Island analogy is genius. Professor could make a radio using coconuts. But couldn’t patch the hole in the Minnow. Exactly the same as this administration: create inflation, cause FOMC to raise interest rates, then *bail* (Minnow pun intended) the DEI banks caught with resultant bad margins.
The ‘Biden rubric’ in a nutshell: “You know, my dad once said to me, Joey …” nor did it end with, “My word as a Biden.”
This is a very good point. It seems to me, generally, that there are two types of chronic liars; the few who lie coldly and pragmatically to achieve a future end, and are always in touch with reality; and the many who lie expediently to cover a past error or past lie, and who create their own reality. The former know they are lying and don’t deceive themselves, and the latter don’t care that they are lying and they deliberately deceive themselves. I tend to think Biden falls more into this latter group, which I call sociopaths.
I’ve known and talked with a lot of sociopaths. But one thing about sociopaths is that when their world crumbles and reality hits them in the face, they temporarily break down emotionally and recognize their dysfunctional behaviors. But this self-critical introspection doesn’t last long: when the immediate crisis is removed, they retreat again to their personal life story. In other words, deep down they know that the narrative they’ve constructed is wrong, but it is too valuable to them to surrender it, and it armors them with confidence and excuses to continue in their social dysfunction.
Just looking at his lies about the truck driver whom he claims killed his wife and children, and his own description of his law school achievements, this seems to be how Biden operates.
Today’s contribution is Biden claiming to have received an almost certainly fake letter from a little girl about the gender pay gap. Like some elementary school child is going to even be aware of the issue unless heavily coached by someone. So even if a child physically wrote the letter, it is obviously a set-up.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/03/15/biden-letter-on-gender-pay-gap-n2620615?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&recip=19995525
Biden’s propensity to just make stuff up is in some ways amazing to watch.
I don’t think Joe Biden should take seriously letters with such bad spelling.
Bill Clinton
Hillary, who dodged sniper fire in Sarajevo, and Biden.
Did I ever post on Ricochet about the time George Santos and I pulled Joe Biden down into safety in a trench under fire just outside of Khe Sanh? Had Richard Blumthal and his recon Marines not showed up or Tom Hardin not dived and strafed the bastards at greatest personal danger it could have gone badly for us. Or about how much Raquel Welch liked to run her fingers over my battle scars. I never told her that while the other six were bullet wounds that one above the left nipple was from a knife fight in a bar in Tijuana when I saved Jack Nicholson…
More and more I am coming to see that politicians aren’t talking for the benefit of rational people but are instead invoking the words that make everything look better. And the more they do this, the less sure a lot of people become regarding whether or not we have always been at war with East Asia.