The Biden Way becomes The Chicago Way, so shut up and take it, America.
By John Kass
Hunter Biden, the former crack addict who used his father’s political clout to leverage big paydays as an international business tycoon in Ukraine and China, now has a side hustle:
He’s a budding artist. He’s always been artistically inclined, he says.
But he doesn’t have the time to suffer in poverty and live on peanut butter and Ramen noodles like other young artists. Hunter isn’t some kid. He’s past 50 now. And he’s President Joe Biden’s son.
Some art critics suggest Hunter might sell his artwork for $500,000. But that’s lowballing Hunter’s appeal. Is he worth big bucks because he’s some new Picasso? No, the big bucks will come because he’s Hunter Biden.
What better way to reach out and touch the “The Big Guy” than by buying Son of Big Guy’s art?
“How much of that value is due to the art itself? That’s easy: none of it,” Jeffry Cudlin, professor of art curatorial studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art told the Washington Examiner. Hunter art isn’t exactly memorable, he said. “They’re fine decorative amateur art. Hey, everybody needs a hobby!”
The artwork has been critically panned. But it’s like art for which people spend $850-$3,000 “to hang over someone’s couch,” Cudlin said.
But what if that couch belonged to Xi Jinping, leader of communist China? Xi just might want some Hunter art to fondly remember Hunter’s business successes in China.
Or some Ukrainian natural gas oligarch, or an American tycoon or anyone with massive reach and clout who seeks more clout?
There’s nothing so powerful as that federal hammer. And all the eager go-betweens and cutouts want to help direct that hammer in the hands of Joe. You can almost hear them thinking:
Hey, I’ve got a big couch. I’ll need a big Hunter for that big couch. A big, big Hunter.
They’ll buy up that Hunter art that he spits on canvas through a straw. But they’d also buy Hunter finger paintings or even a Hunter papier-mache head of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They’d buy Hunter anything.
The Biden White House, that paragon of ethics and transparency in government, has come up with ludicrous excuses and a laughable “ethics” shield so that Hunter won’t be officially told who buys his paintings from a New York gallery.
This means the public won’t know who bought them either.
Isn’t it funny how that happens?
Obviously, it’s all bull (crap) and most Americans can smell it. Of course, others may sincerely love the idea of the president’s son embarking on an artistic journey.
But not all of us are chumbolones.
“Of course, he has the right to pursue an artistic career just like any child of a president has the right to pursue a career,” says Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
OK Jen. Put that in a bottle and sell it as perfume. Just put a little dab behind your ear. But don’t complain about the flies.
Crooked Chicago politicians perfected this sort of thing many years ago. Grabbing envelopes of cash was too easy, and too risky. The true art of corruption is in holding elected office while selling goods and services and making a fortune under the color of law.
Some sold beer, others became lawyers helping businesses win city permits. The true artists helped their clients reduce property taxes they just helped raise.
It’s all nice and legal-like. Until it isn’t.
Years ago, corrupt judges in Illinois benefitted from their wives selling artwork and insurance policies. The spouses had a right to pursue their artistic and business careers, too, didn’t they, Jen Psaki?
Then came the Operation Greylord indictments, back decades ago when the public still had some faith in the Justice Department and the media. More than a dozen judges were sentenced to federal prison on corruption and bribery charges. Many lawyers and bagmen were also convicted. And there was talk of “reform.”
But have things changed? As you read this, three members of the Chicago City Council are currently under federal indictment. And a fourth former alderman who liked the massage parlors cut a deal with the feds and wore a wire. There have been so many politicians indicted in the latest federal corruption probe rolling from Springfield to Chicago that the public can’t count them all. And over the years, we’ve had governors thrown in jail. Nothing changes.
It has been said that the Bidens operate the Delaware Way. I don’t give two figs for the Delaware Way. I don’t eat in Delaware.
But is there a difference between the corporate and smiley Delaware Way and the Chicago Way?
Yes. A big difference. And it’s all about the open humiliation of the people.
The Delaware Way is all about putting a positive spin on bi-partisan political corruption to explain how things are done. But Chicago is long past that. That’s what Chicago was told to believe decades ago, what we used to tell ourselves about the grease lubricating “the city that works.” It was the price we thought we paid to make the machinery run.
But now it lubricates nothing. There’s no longer machinery in Chicago sensitive to the people and working to serve them. All that remains is debt and the exercise of power and perpetual grift.
Under The Chicago Way the people understand the rules. They know the political class lies to them. And the political class knows that they know.
The response of the politicians is this: Shut up and take it. And even then, chances are you could get a hard slap across the mouth just because. Then you’re supposed to smile and say, ‘Thank you sir, may I please have another?”
There’s nothing better for a political class than to have their subjects beaten into submission. True believers, fools that they are, can become quite challenging when they finally realize, always too late, that reality doesn’t match their illusions. But in Chicago and the rest of Illinois, there are no illusions anymore.
And the acquiescence of the people, whether by tugging on a forelock or the doffing of a cap to political lords– whether to a crooked alderman or to a president with a son on a side hustle–isn’t what America was supposed to be about. It is right out of the Soviet dominated Eastern Bloc of old.
Such acquiescence reinforced by fear of sanction is consciously self-abasing. It is all about self-humiliation. And when the people are expected to become active participants in their own humiliation, dangerous seeds are planted that grow over time.
It’s not just the Hunter Biden art saga, but the entire operation. What of the Hunter Biden laptop story that the New York Post broke before the November election, and all those emails about Hunter’s business deals and Biden Inc?
All of that was suppressed by the Beltway media—what some of us correctly call the Democratic Media Complex—and by Big Tech as part of a larger scheme to protect Joe Biden and the establishment he represented and help them win the presidential election.
In a presidential debate, Biden pointedly promoted a letter dishonorably signed by former American intelligence officers. Their letter suggested that the Hunter laptop scandal may have been the work of Russian spies. The intelligence officers sold their honor, and the reputations of their agencies, for partisan benefit. And with that, the media had another excuse to ignore the laptop story.
But it turned out that the Hunter laptop story wasn’t the work of Russian spies. It was real. Hunter was (and is) under a federal tax investigation. He’s being investigated by the Justice Department under his father’s command.
According to Politico, the Republican U.S. Attorney in Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware—whose nomination was backed by both of Delaware’s Democratic senators–had enough to seek grand jury subpoenas before the election, but didn’t, lest it leak before the election and hurt Joe.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/16/hunter-biden-probe-prosecutor-499782
Funny how stuff like that happens.
Legacy establishment media is all but silent on the Hunter art story. They rub their forelegs together like crickets in a can, adrift in some leaky rowboat taking on water that will inevitably sink to the bottom.
Media and Big Tech in service of the Bidens ignored the Wuhan Lab leak story and mocked as conspiracy theorists those who suggested otherwise. Establishment media also pushed that Trump Russia collusion lie day after day after day, year after year and applauded themselves for their Pulitzers.
The humiliation of the American public continues. Now there are new efforts to maximize that humiliation.
For example, Americans are now told by the media that white people are irredeemably racist, even if they don’t question the racist teachings commonly called Critical Race Theory being forced upon their children in public schools and shoved down the throats of their soldiers who are supposed to defend the nation.
They are told such stuff isn’t being taught to their kids. But they see it with their own eyes. They see the government telling them how to raise their kids under threat of sanction. And many of them, white, Black and brown, don’t like being divided by race.
They’re not supposed to argue. They’re expected to shut up and take it, put their heads down and pretend it’s not happening to them and their kids, or even pretend to like it. And so, their humiliation becomes complete.
Maybe under the Bidens, we’ll see if our national motto, “E Pluribus Unum” (Out of Many, One) is replaced by another:
“Thank you sir, may I please have another?”
(Copyright 2021 John Kass)
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