Where We Are This Week
We check in on our favorite turkey, Hunter Biden is super pardoned and I reimagine World War III. Don't worry, it's great.
Maybe you’re not sure how you’re going to burn all of those Thanksgiving calories off this month. Maybe you’re an elf considering going on strike. Maybe you’re just waiting on that end-of-the-year bonus so you can buy your family that in-ground pool you’ve promised them.
Whether you’re never going to start that new workout routine, you’re never going to convince your scab coworkers on a walkout from the toy line, or you're destined to get that Jelly of the Month Club subscription, we all have bad weeks.
One thing that is important to remember, however, is that no matter how bad your week might be, it can’t be any worse than our poor pardoned turkey friends from last week’s post. Have you been laid off? Did your wife of fifty years tell you she’d like to put a pineapple on the front porch?
I get it; we all have a lot to complain about, but not one of us had to peck around while the smell of roasted, fried, grilled, and smoked bird wafted through the entirety of the lower 48. Remember those who were condemned to survival. Remember the turkeys.
Sometimes, I feel like I should change. Like, maybe I should take a break from being myself. The neurotic, overthinking, always joking, never-ending minutia of my conscience does get tiresome, and just when I think I might turn over a new leaf, I write a poem about the Thanksgiving-pardoned Turkey — and then write about it some more. Change is for the birds.
Who is having a remarkably good week, however, is the one and only Hunter Biden. Heir to the Biden fortune, artiste extraordinaire, powder enthusiast, energy expert. These are just some of the superlatives that the Biden wunderkind is entitled to, but thanks to the big man — and I don’t mean the one upstairs (because we all know Joe isn’t walking up those anymore) — on December 1st, the president’s son can add one more title to his name. Free.
It’s actually surprising that he didn’t wait closer to the end of his term to pardon his son. Maybe he doesn’t think he’ll be president for that long, and that’s why he did it, or maybe he’s hoping everyone will forget about it by the time January 20th rolls around. Either way, a glorious new precedent has been set.
The 54-year-old boy received a full, unconditional pardon from good ol’ dad. ‘From what?’ an interested observer might ask. ‘From everything.’
The pardon begins as follows, stating that Hunter Biden receives a pardon for:
those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted (including any that have resulted in convictions) by Special Counsel David C. Weiss
Holy smokes, do the phrases ‘may have committed’ and ‘not limited to’ do some heavy lifting here. What Hunter Biden received is an 11-year-long get-out-of-jail free pass for absolutely any crime he could have committed. Bribery? You betcha. Theft? Why not? Murder?!? Well, it’s only natural.
The younger Biden was awarded clemency not because an investigation into his foreign business dealings is inherently politically motivated but because his influence-peddling likely implicates the rest of the Biden family.
Not satisfied with one warm blanket of a pardon, according to the New York Times, the Biden Administration is considering offering similar executive exceptions to Dr. Fauci and Adam Schiff and other lovable apparatchiks. Ostensibly, these provisions will be taken because they fear the ‘political retribution’ that would be excised by the incoming Trump Administration and want to protect those fearless truth-sayers who were on the frontlines.
Instead, it’s an admission.
I was reliably informed, over the last four years, that our justice system was beyond reproach and that the American judiciary was a bastion of objectivity against the pressures of politics and revenge. Now, I am to believe that an entire ecosystem of lawyers and judges can be persuaded by the desires of one wayward POTUS? You’re putting me on. We all know that the DOJ and the executive branch never cross streams.
Pardoning every half-effectual so-and-so that generated any notoriety under one administration will be the new norm. It’s the same as questioning the legitimacy of every election but the ones you win as it reduces the institution to one primary function: to protect or prosecute your political allies and enemies, respectively.
What used to be a recursive power struggle for the sake of policy is now a recursive power struggle for the sake of power itself.
The Left is more politically deft and adept at pulling the levers of bureaucracy than the Right. These are the tiny, imperceptible insurrections that consolidate power within the executive branch of government and further insulate the office from the will of the people — these are the types of maneuvers that are germane to the Left. On the Right, you just get big, dumb, uncoordinated ones like January 6th that lead to nothing but more success from their sly counterparts.
Now, all of Trump’s children and wives and gardeners and DOGE officials will be clambering for a decade-long pardon the moment the curtain falls on the last Trump term. I mean, how long until Jared Kushner gets investigated for that cool $2 billi (billion) the Saudis invested with him after he served on the MAGA Middle East roster?
I mean, if it brings a World Cup win to the United States, then maybe it’s worth following in the steps of Brazil, where every former president becomes a criminal the instant they leave office. So, maybe if we just do the pardons on everybody, we get all the upside? All the Ronaldhinos but none of the Neymars? Is this Brazil footballing analogy too in the weeds? Obrigado.
Donald Trump was remarkably non-vindictive during his first term, and it’s not exactly his fault that the future disposition of the White House regarding its political opponents largely rests on the example he’ll set over the next four years. Someone will have to be first to display a modicum of restraint. Whether Trump can be the first to do so is an interesting proposition — whether his political opponents can follow suit is an even bigger headscratcher.
What can be certain, though, is that Hunter Biden will sleep easier tonight knowing whatever mischief he got into in Ukraine, China, or his dead brother’s wife’s pants has all been forgiven. He can be happy now — unlike our poor pardoned turkey.
There’s been a lot of talk about World War III lately. (Not from me, I don’t know where you’d ever get that idea.) Most recently from this Free Press article. While it’s probably legitimate to imagine a wartime scenario where every morning, you emerge from your bomb shelter, wipe the radioactive dust from your windshield, and go to the woods to see if any of your traps caught a mutant squirrel, it might not be that bad.
Instead, WWIII might be a series of disconnected civil wars and skirmishes that lead to the slow disintegration of the global hierarchy to which we’ve become so accustomed. While the rest of the world is in shambles, litigating endless disagreements with themselves or their neighbors, elsewhere, giants sleep.
Global collapse. The stock market crashed because it failed to do a land acknowledgment before the bell rung, Israel ceased to be a country because it refused to win, South Africa brought charges against itself to the ICC and the whole country was extradited to the Hague, and Czechoslovakia reunites but never establishes a government because they can’t decide which country’s name should go first.
Stalled progress and unanimous civil war plague the next three centuries of the Earth, plummeting us into the next Dark Age. A solar storm causes an electrical surge over the Pacific Ocean, creating a twenty-year shroud of dust over a small island off the coast. During the depths of our effete winter, new titans emerge.
The Heads of Easter Island, animated by the cosmic pulse that lit the skies two decades earlier, rise from their beds of dirt and sand to survey the world around them. Dismayed by the destruction and disarray that they observed, they vow to restore humanity to its previous height.
In a random house in the state formerly known as Tennessee, one of our heroes discovers a CD by The Baha Men. Thinking it was some oracle from a past island civilization, the Heads of Easter Island vow to answer the question, ‘Who let the dogs out?’ and embark on a restoration project that would bring Earth back to circa 1999 — one year before the pups were set free and all hell was unleashed.
If only they can stop those canines from getting loose, they may be able to prevent the demise of the planet itself.
So, yeah, there have been more than a few coup attempts in the developed world over the last couple of years (Russia, Venezuela, Germany - sort of, and South Korea), civil conflict is all the rage (Syria, Georgia, Canada), and war is fashionable again! But before you go lamenting about how the nuclear fallout will get us all, it could be better than that.
Honestly, playing a Gameboy and listening to ‘Champagne Supernova’ under the supervision of our benevolent Easter Island overlords sounds pretty sweet. So, you know, give peace a chance. Or not.
To a better next week,
Cheers,
~FDA