Glenn K. Beaton is a writer and columnist living in Colorado. He has been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, RealClearPolitics, Powerline, Instapundit, Citizen Free Press, American Thinker, Fox News, The Federalist, and numerous other print, radio and television outlets. His most recent book is "High Attitude — How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen"
This week was the ridiculous annual spectacle where the president is supposed to tell us the state of our so-called union, as if we don’t already know. That’s a particularly appropriate topic for the current president who was elected on the promise that he would be a “uniter, not divider” who would bring normalcy and decency back to the office.
A few seconds into it, this “uniter, not divider” was implying that the people who currently disfavor his re-election, a cohort comprising over half the country – and especially his “predecessor” whose name must not be spoken – were in league with Vladimir Putin.
It almost made me miss the good old pre-1989 Democrats who liked Russia.
I voted for Donald Trump twice. But I’ve never used the words “altruistic” or “generous” to describe him. In fact, whenever my support for Trump came up, I always hastened to add, a little sanctimoniously, that I don’t like the man personally.
I might be changing my mind. Here’s why.
Trump didn’t need to go into politics. He’s a billionaire. He had everything a man could want, including a gorgeous ex-model for a wife. (Money is a more potent aphrodisiac than power. Sorry, Henry Kissinger – you’d have known that if only you’d had money.)
Trump went into politics anyway. Sure, there was an ego factor. I hope it doesn’t surprise you that successful men have egos. So do successful women.
But Trump could have exercised that healthy ego in many other ways involving less risk and less cost. He could have bought a cruise ship, or a gold-plated 747, or donated a billion dollars to get a medical center named after him, or started a charitable foundation – a real one, not like the Clinton Foundation.
He instead chose to run for president back in 2016. That doesn’t make him Mother Teresa, but it makes him a lot closer to Mother Teresa than to Joe Biden – the guy who has spent a lifetime in politics because he’s been a failure at every other thing in life, including parenting, and whose lifetime in politics has been primarily for the purpose of lining the greasy, grafty and grifty pockets of himself and his cheesy, sleazy family.
Immediately upon taking office, Joe Biden reversed President Trump’s “stay-in-Mexico” policy. Under that policy, immigrants seeking asylum were required to stay in Mexico or their home country while applying for asylum in the United States.
The alternative – followed by the preceding Obama Administration – is for the immigrants to enter the country with the proviso that they have to show up for a hearing some months or years in the future to determine their asylum claim. Of course, many immigrants never showed up for their hearings, and simply remained in the country illegally.
Which brings us to a semantics point. People who choose words precisely call these immigrants who are in the county illegally, “illegal immigrants.” Other people, whose choice of words is subordinate to their political leanings, instead use various euphemisms.
The euphemism crowd wants not to call illegal immigrants “illegal immigrants” because such a term suggests that they are acting illegally. Most of us frown on illegal acts (though a growing number apparently don’t).
Think of it as a branding strategy, something like calling garbage collectors “sanitation engineers” or calling communists “liberals.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a Supreme Court Justice and a darling of the left. She was endearingly referred to as “Notorious RBG” for her strident opinions invariably siding with the Democrats on political issues.
But she grew old. She also grew feeble physically and, sadly, to some extent mentally as well. She started breaking Court tradition by giving television interviews, where she unfortunately spoke intemperately about political issues.
Shortly before the 2016 election, she told a reporter that Donald Trump was “a faker.”
And then she said something to the reporter that apparently came into her head at that moment because she really had an ego. She said Trump “says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.”
Joe Biden has always been considered not very bright and not very honest. Beyond that, he’s thin-skinned and hot-tempered according to White House staff. His ability to remember and his ability to think – never very good – are worsening. He’s spent 40% of his time in the White House not in the White House, but on vacation at the beach in Delaware.
He has a creepy thing for other people’s young daughters which an irate dad might someday react to in a way Joe doesn’t anticipate.
As for his casual relationship with facts, he certainly lies on occasion, as when it comes to his family influence-peddling business, for example.
We were told by illegal immigration activists for years that walls don’t work, Oddly, however, they lobbied vigorously against a wall along our porous border with Mexico. If walls don’t work, I wondered, why are the pro-illegal immigration activists so dead set against them?
And if walls don’t work, I further wondered, why did the Berlin Wall succeed in imprisoning freedom-seekers for decades? Why are there walls around prisons? Why is there a wall around the White House?
But I’m not a wall scientist, so I figured there must be good answers to those questions but the answers were beyond my ken. I did learn from yard signs that it’s important to follow the science and that there is no such thing as an illegal human. So, I figured there must be something I was missing about wall-atology.
Former and future President Donald Trump seemed to miss it too. He built walls on portions of our border with Mexico to reduce illegal border crossings.
Most Americans say they will vote against Joe Biden next year, even if four-time indictee and twice-impeached Donald Trump is the Republican nominee.
Most Americans say Biden was on the take from foreign governments – they think he accepted bribes directly or through his criminal son. And most Democrats think Biden is too old to be president.
A recent poll by ABC/WaPo (not exactly “far-right-wingers” as the media likes to label dissenters from their narrative) puts Biden’s approval rating at 37% overall, in the low 30s on economics, and in the low 20s on immigration. And it says if the election were held today, he’d lose to Trump by 10 points – a blowout that would surely cost the Democrats the Senate as well.
Republicans would then own the presidency, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and most state governorships and legislatures. Yikes, that scares even me, but I’ll take it.
The Barbary pirates were a ragtag gang of North African pirates who terrorized Europe for centuries. They pirated commercial shipping, raided as far north as Ireland and Iceland to abduct and enslave Europeans –especially women – for the harems of the Middle East, and exacted tribute in exchange for safe ocean passage.
In two wars, the new United States of America put an end to them. The first was in 1801-1805. The second was ten years later and lasted just a few days, permanently putting the barbarian Barbarians out of business. America and Europe finally stopped paying tribute and ransom and enduring slave raids.
Fast forward to the year 2023. Modern-day Barbary pirates in Iran routinely kidnap Americans and Europeans to hold for ransom. Last week, the Biden administration paid an astonishing $6 billion for the release of six of them – a billion dollars each if my math serves.
But it’s no yawn to the virtue signalers and the control freaks and the teachers’ unions and the socialist politicians and the “work” from home crowd. They see it as another chance to signal virtue, exercise freakish control, avoid real teaching, redistribute more wealth, and “work” from home forever.
They had a ball last time. Yes, it damaged a generation of children, cost the country trillions of dollars (the repayment of which we’ll bequeath to those damaged children), sparked a lawlessness that still endures, elected a mean, stupid, senile, bribe-taker to the presidency, and spawned inflation that has diminished real earnings and will take years to drain from the system. But who cares about those things?
Well, I do. So do most other Americans.
I care about something else, too. As a matter of principle, I care that these selfish petty tyrants lied and cheated to impose their destructive will on Americans. I care that they owned us and our country for a couple of years and in that time laid great cities to ruins for vagrants, something like the Vandals sacking Rome to inaugurate the Dark Ages.
I care that they humiliated me, my family, and my culture. I care, and I remember.
So . . . we have a score to settle with these little Nazi Nero’s who fiddled, froliced and fornicated while our civilization burned.
Let’s have a rematch. My message to them is: Bring back your totalitarianism, your overreaching diktats, your lockdowns, your vaccine cards and, oh yes, especially your mask mandates.
Just try it. I dare you and I beg you. Make my day.
The walls are closing in around the Bidens. Sworn testimony and bank records show that they accepted at least $20 million from foreign entities during the time Joe was Vice President. These foreign entities are notoriously corrupt ones such as China, Russia, Romania and Ukraine.
Joe’s son was the ringleader, but it was Joe that he was selling. Joe was the “brand” according to sworn testimony. Who else could have been? There’s no conceivable reason for these foreigners to send millions to the Biden family other than to influence the “brand.”
the Aspen beat 