The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
Apparently Hunter Biden has been a trial to Joes Biden for much of his life. He was a difficult child to raise, and his problems with alcohol and drug addiction as an adult have created many headaches for the president. Now Hunter is involved in complicated and complicating tax issues that are not being resolved easily or readily. The details are murky at best, but they give the appearance of malfeasance.
Shakespeare wrote, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” How often over the course several decades has Joe Biden been reminded of a similar sentiment. Yet he has supported his son as best he could through all of Hunter’s numerous escapades, never giving up on him.
One major factor that has dogged Hunter for years is that he received $1,500,000 per year as a member of the board of directors of a Ukrainian company while his father was vice-president. Republicans have not allowed any well informed person to forget that, because it has an obvious scent of political favoritism. Whether Joe Biden knew about this offer before Hunter accepted it is a matter of conjecture.
A man named Gai Luft is a US and Israeli citizen. He brought what seemed like solidly incriminating evidence against Hunter Biden, and many Republican detractors were licking their chops. They thought Hunter had surely been caught in a snare. Then Mr. Luft himself came under suspicion by federal authorities. Before they could bring him in for questioning, he fled the US, and no one knows where he is.
This wrinkle should have proven a boon to Hunter, but it has not, or at least not much. In the meantime, the president is constantly besieged by questions about Hunter’s actions, and he ignores or deflects them as best he can.
No one is more devoted to the concept of family than Joe Biden. He is protective to a fault, and in Hunter’s case, the problems of the son somehow reflect badly on the father. That is a misfortune for the president, who has enough troubles of his own in a highly polarized body politic. Sleaze clings to Hunter like iron filings to a magnet, and it transfers from son to father, even though nobody has managed to implicate Joe Biden in any of Hunter Biden’s misdoings.
If Hunter is guilty of anything, it is as nothing compared to the cornucopia of allegations against Donald Trump. Nonetheless, the former president regularly casts aspersions on the current president’s son, as do other adversaries of Joe Biden.
The campaign for the presidency in 2024 is going to be (and already is) brutal. The list of elevated crimes and misdemeanors against Donald Trump is long, and it is getting longer. Is it possible that Joe Biden’s bid for re-election could be derailed before the Democratic Convention next summer by the dubious dealings of Hunter Biden? If so, what a miscarriage of justice that would be. In light of the legal avalanche that is descending on Mr. Trump, it would the height of irony for the sins of the Biden son to be visited upon the Biden father, especially if the former president should escape both law and order.
-July 29 , 2024
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.