Counter-Currents
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Author’s Note: In a recent livestream, Edith asked me “Who is really in charge in the Biden Administration?” Hyacinth Bouquet transcribed my answer, and I cleaned it up and expanded it a bit. I want to thank Edith for her question and Hyacinth for her transcription.
This is a serious question, to which I will first give an unserious answer, then a serious one.
I’ve been wondering about this question for quite a while. But now we have an answer. Now we know that the Easter Bunny is actually in charge of the Biden Administration. Biden was at an Easter-related event at the White House. He’s senile and wandered off. He started talking to the press, saying things about Afghanistan and Pakistan. Biden can’t even read a teleprompter anymore, much less speak off the cuff, so he must be constantly “handled.”
After a few minutes, a handler disguised as the Easter Bunny – or maybe it really was the Easter Bunny, for all I know – intervened. The Easter Bunny got Biden’s attention. Because Biden will immediately forget what he’s doing if you distract him, right? Then the Easter Bunny led the vacant and doddering leader of the free world away so he wouldn’t say anything unauthorized to the press.
I was wondering who would be in charge of the Biden administration back before he was elected. Even then, the man was manifestly senile and thus incompetent. Thus it was utterly reckless of the Democrats to put him in the White House. But all they were thinking about was getting rid of the fascist Trump. Biden has only declined since he’s gotten into office. He’s less competent now. He will be less competent tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after.
It’s a farce. Until, perhaps, it turns into a tragedy. Because Biden could incontinently get us into a nuclear war with Russia or China. It’s dangerous to have a person who can’t take responsibility in the position of ultimate responsibility.
What does that mean about our government? It means that our elected leader really isn’t our leader. Instead, the country is run by unelected people who arrived in the White House in Biden’s baggage. These people aren’t elected. We don’t necessarily even know all their names. So how can they be held accountable by the people?
Edith’s question is based on the Schmittian axiom that in every system, there must be somebody ultimately in charge, especially in a crisis. This person is the sovereign, the supreme executive. We think that no system, no serious country – and America must be a serious country, right? – has nobody in charge, nobody responsible, nobody minding the store, no adults in the room. Surely there has to be some adult. There’s got to be somebody at whom the buck stops.
But that might be an optimistic assumption. That might be giving them entirely too much credit. There might not be any adults here. We might not have anybody really in charge.
We might have a country that is simply ruled by the ever-shifting consensus of the liberal hive-mind, a highly neurotic hive-mind that can be spun around from one moral enthusiasm, from one hysteria to another. Unfortunately, like senile old men, mobs lack responsibility, foresight, and self-control. There’s nobody thinking ahead. Nobody concerned about ultimate consequences. Nobody able to tap on the brakes before the country hits a wall or goes over a cliff.
So the country is just drifting from one crisis to another with nobody in charge. This is how empires end. This is how societies collapse. The fish rots from the head down, as the Italian saying says. There is literally no brain in charge in the Oval Office. That’s a terrifying possibility, but also a hopeful one. Because when a system like that is tested, it crumbles.
There are, of course, many people circling around Biden. They all have their agendas. But all these people are just in it for what they can get. None of these people have any real skin in the game in the sense that if there is a crisis, they’re willing to die to preserve the system. None of them is really accountable. They’re just opportunists. They are getting what they can, while they can.
The best analogy I can think of is the last Emperor of China, Puyi, who became Emperor when he was two years old. China was an absolute monarchy. The Emperor was thus ultimately responsible for everything in China. But the Emperor was not an adult. He was not responsible for his own life, much less an entire empire. Actually, the last three Emperors of China came to power as children. Thus ultimate executive responsibility was placed in the hands of people who were not fit to exercise it.
America’s child emperor
So who was running the country? The farce of the child Emperors empowered opportunistic courtiers to pursue their own private interests while going through the motions of serving the public good. They had a thousand little grifts going. They were emptying out the treasury. They were giving one another honors. They were using state power to settle personal grudges. But the person who was ultimately responsible for preserving the Empire in a crisis was incapable of handling the job. Thus it was a hollow and brittle system that was eventually overthrown in a revolution.
When the monarchy was abolished, Puyi’s courtiers didn’t even bother telling him that he was no longer Emperor. He wouldn’t have understood anyway. Someday, the drooling husk of Joe Biden will no longer be President either. But why bother telling him? By the time it is all over, he won’t be able to understand anyway.
The Biden administration is a farce, which was crystallized beautifully by the Easter Bunny incident.
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10 comments
Didn’t Biden’s microphone get cut off once? I remember thinking at the time, in a Schmittian vein, that whoever had the authority to cut off the President’s microphone must be true sovereign.
Good piece. Thanks.
The interesting questions (beyond the “true sovereign” issue, which is likely resolved by the reality of ‘access’- maybe it’s the First Lady, maybe the Chief of Staff who’s the real power):
A. Will Biden make it through the entire term?
B. Will the Democrats strongarm him to resign (esp. after November’s Congressional shellacking – we hope)? Or will he resign of his own accord?
C. If he makes it, will he run again?
D. If he does not run (my hunch), will Kamala be the ’24 nominee? (I don’t think so.)
If GOP massively retakes Congress (and do not overly despair – the Senate map in ’24 is much better for the GOP than this year’s), they will kill 90% of Biden’s agenda (the rest he gets via EOs and general Presidential powers, like judicial appointments). That will work beautifully, as Dems will get blamed (by the admittedly dwindling but still existent band of swing morons) for the country’s problems, but will be without the power to enact their ‘solutions’. That should help DeSantis win the White House (if Trump gets the nomination, all predictions are off).
Here’s hoping. Trump will never be America’s Orbán, but DeSantis? Just maybe.
“We might have a country ruled by a hive-mind, a highly neurotic hive-mind that can be spun around from one moral enthusiasm, from one hysteria to another.”
Seems more true than ever, and I think those that have the ability to orchestrate/intensify the spinning might be the closest to actually being in charge… institutions themselves ruled by a hive-mind.
A crisp and refreshing piece from Greg which is highly readable and enlightening. I was impressed particularly by Greg’s erudition on Chinese feudal history, and in this specific context, the last Manchurian Qing Dynasty. Indeed, the last three emperors of the said dynasty, counting backward, Puyi (whose reign title is Xuan Tong), and before him, Guang Xu, and before that, Tong Zhi (both refer to their reign titles), all ascended to the throne as children.
Following the end of the dynasty and the founding of the republic, Puyi aka. Guang Xu was deposed but was allowed to continue his residence within the Forbidden Palace but was later driven out by some powerful general. Then later, a royalist general mounted a successful but short-lived coup to restore the dethroned monarch before he was finally ejected from the throne and his royal palace for good. After the Japanese took the Manchuria in 1931, Puyi was escorted to his Manchurian ancestral homeland and became a political puppet albeit with his royal title and dignity intact under the Japanese control until he was taken captive by the Soviets in the wake of Japan’s defeat in 1945. Puyi was sent back to the communist China in 1950 and spent 9 years as a political prisoner in communist reeducation camp until he was released via a special amnesty in 1959. He lived the rest of his life as an obedient civilian and a model collaborator of the communist regime and died in 1967 at the age of 61.
The word “dementia’ finally made it onto the screen and the publics’ ears one evening on Fox News recently one evening, probably by Tucker Carlson — the least-likely candidate not to be cancelled after speaking the truth.
I want to know whose voice in President Biden’s earpiece said “salute the marines” when Joe Biden entered the White House as President Biden for the first time.
President Biden said “salute the marines” as he strode into the White House. He did not salute or in any way recognize the marines whom protocol decreed he should salute.
Newly installed President Biden was a puppet who recited whatever the voice in his ear said, but he did not understand context or the connection between words and actions.
If you think beginnings are important, and the way things start offers clues to how they may go on, this was a significant moment, as well as a darkly comical one.
Biden’s apparent senility might be considered a feature, not a bug, by the Regime.
Donald Trump was a real shock to that Regime, a leader who seemingly came out of nowhere and swept into the White House on a national-populist wave. Can’t have that, trad Americans might start getting ideas like they have some say in the running of the state.
Where Biden comes in is that, by placing a senile guy in front of the Oval House teleprompter, mockery is made of the American presidency. So if another national-populist gets elected, many Americans will not take the presidency seriously. In the meantime, the various factions of the Regime can loot the American Empire to their heart’s content while launching global wars which other people get to fight.
Really, if Biden has to be escorted off the set by a giant rabbit, what does that say? Perhaps Biden’s mojo has been such that he has gotten the entire world to see the Pooka.
Now we know what to wear if you stray over your allotted time during a speaking engagement!
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