Our Hereditary Political Aristocracy

The least you can say is that Hunter Biden was profiting from his father’s position. Was it corrupt? Of course, it was. Would you have gotten the same deal from a Ukrainian gas company? It may or may not have been illegal, but building a career and collecting massive fees for nothing but your father’s position is so obviously corrupt that only the most partisan politician or commentator could even pretend to excuse it.

The fact that many Americans, from Anderson Cooper on down, are willing to excuse the Hunter Biden corruption is a very bad sign. It is of a piece with the simple fact, observable to anyone who has eyes and ears, that Joe Biden, bless him, is mentally deficient. Perhaps he is suffering from dementia, but the man is constantly incoherent, barely capable of formulating a correct English sentence. The world is rushing to forgive Biden his gaffes, but still, if Donald Trump had ever made such a series of gaffes, and had consequently avoided all sit down interviews, the psycho world would rise up and call for treatment… or at least disqualification.

That people drone on about Joe Biden’s gaffes, ignoring the true story of his mental deficiency, reflects ill on the state of the national mind.

Anyway, a few Democratic voices are crying out in the wilderness… to coin a phrase. Among them, one Hamilton Nolan, writing in the Guardian. Why, pray tell, do we need to turn to a British leftist newspaper to read some sensible leftist commentary about Hunter Biden? The American media has descended into propaganda… that’s why.

Anyway, corruption is not always corruption. And yet, the way that the sons and daughters of politicians are treated should be a major scandal. So says Nolan, and he is correct. It has nothing to do with meritocracy, a dim memory mostly done in by diversity quotas. 

It more closely resembles a hereditary aristocracy. But, weren’t America’s founders congenitally opposed to hereditary aristocracy… and in favor of meritocracy? One might suggest that the distance between diversity quotas, quotas that favor people for reasons that have little to do with merit, are kissing cousins with hereditary aristocracy, advantages that accrue according to blood. With diversity quotas you gain advantages by being a member of an oppressed group… not for anything you have done.

Anyway, Nolan opines:

The son of a longtime US senator gets his start as a lawyer with one of the biggest corporate donors to his dad’s campaigns; a friend of his dad’s gets him a job in the Clinton administration, and then as a lobbyist; later, while his father is vice president, he is given a $50,000 per month seat on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm, despite lacking any clear energy expertise. How does this all happen? It happened the same way that Chelsea Clinton became a “special correspondent” for NBC News, and Jenna Bush got a job as a Today show host, and the Trump children got jobs overseeing a real estate empire. It happened the same way, for that matter, that George W Bush – objectively, a flailing dumbass – became the governor of Texas and then the president of the United States.

Merit be damned, earning your way, being qualified for a position, contributing to the general good… these fall into insignificance if you belong to a dynastic political family:

When you are the son of a famous and powerful politician, you are showered with opportunity, whether you deserve it or not. This is nepotism, but it is also, if we are being direct, a form of corruption. Moral corruption. Not only because these prestigious positions are not earned, and because these celebukids are taking something that rightly should have gone to someone more deserving; but also because, even though there is rarely anything so crude as a direct quid pro quo, this undeserved largesse is always motivated to some extent by a desire by some powerful interest to take advantage of the halo of influence cast by the parents. That influence should properly accrue to the public, who their parents work for. The lavish lives afforded to famous kids are, in effect, stolen from the American people. Each coveted job handed to a president’s kid represents a small quantity of subversion of the spirit of the democratic process.

So, Nolan, evidently a man of the left, calls out Democrats. You know, the party that worships anyone with the name Kennedy. Nolan wants Democrats to speak out loudly and clearly, against Hunter and Joe Biden… and at least to call them on their obvious lies about whether or not they ever discussed business:

I don’t want to hear Democrats – members of the party that ostensibly stands for more equality and purer democracy – pretending that the fact that the VP’s son got a do-nothing $600k per year corporate handout is unremarkable. I want Democrats to demonstrate that we live our values. I want Democrats to send their kids to public school, unionize their workplaces and give money to the poor.

It’s a good thought. Republicans should do the same. Fat chance it’s going to happen.