[Biden is] saying, in essence, you can't have this debate anymore because this debate, it undermines my chances exactly, and therefore I want you to shut up. This question is over. Knock it off move on. And I think he's daring them. He's daring his doubters and naysayers to come after him or to shut up. You want to take me on? Take me on. Right? That's the old saying — right? — if you're going to shoot at the king you better not miss. So all eyes right now are on Congressional Democrats to see where they fall this week. Do the floodgates open and they end up abandoning him in large numbers or do they decide to give up on that notion?
First, the "old saying" is in fact a famous quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "When you strike at a king, you must kill him." I wrote about it back in 2019:
I think Emerson was talking to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and Holmes was attacking Plato, hence the riposte. The physical attack was metaphorical. Holmes and Emerson were jousting in the world of words, and Emerson got off a bon mot for the ages.
I was writing about it back then because James Woods was kicked off Twitter for quoting it (slightly rephrased): "If you try to kill the King, you best not miss." Woods was tweeting about the Mueller report. At the time, I said:
Woods was using the physical attack metaphorically. The idea — which deserves to be expressed — is — I think — that there was a coup attempt on Trump and it didn't work, therefore those who attempted it are in desperate trouble.
"A coup attempt" — interesting choice of words in 2019.
This isn't a true threat, just rough political discourse. It's not much like Emerson, because Emerson was speaking in a context where it was clear that only ideas were at stake. Holmes couldn't physically threaten the long-dead Plato.
I think it's also clear that Woods was talking about political power and legal troubles, though the legal troubles are bad enough that they could lead to a physical impact on a human being — that is, a prison term. But there is a problem with Twitter's clipped language and vast dissemination. Among the thousands or millions of readers of a post like "If you try to kill the King, you best not miss’ #HangThemAll" are confused, paranoid, angry people who might hear a message to go out and kill somebody.
I wanted Twitter to apply it's anti-violence policy without political bias, but I had a problem with the deployment of Emerson's "When you strike at a king, you must kill him."
It seems so apt this week as it is mind-bending that Democrats attempted to take down Biden without a guarantee that it would work. But I would advise against statements that visualize physical violence against the President. If you really want to use it, I recommend quoting Emerson verbatim, perhaps hedged with something like "As Emerson famously and metaphorically said...."Even then, I don't like it.ADDED: Googling the famous phrase, I found "Trump quotes Emerson: 'When you strike at the king, you must kill him'/President retweets quote from pre-impeachment Times article" (The Guardian).Retweeting a New York Times piece which quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson – shortly after retweeting footage of a small-town mayor inadvertently live-broadcasting a visit to the toilet, thereby mixing low culture with high – Donald Trump seemed to confirm on Saturday that his campaign for re-election will be fuelled by “grievance, persecution and resentment”.Quoting Times White House correspondent Peter Baker...Peter Baker!
... Trump wrote: “Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed to foresee the lesson of the Senate Impeachment Trial of President Trump. ‘When you strike at the King, Emerson famously said, ‘you must kill him.’“Mr Trump’s foes struck at him but did not take him down. A triumphant Mr Trump emerges from the biggest test of his presidency emboldened, ready to claim exoneration, and take his case of grievance, persecution and resentment to the campaign trail."What a delight to encounter Peter Baker there! And to see him following me advice to mention Emerson and to use the word "famously"... very nice!
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It should be obvious Biden's a pawn and not a king. If the conspirators miss their chance, all they do is blow an election against people who believe in the rule of law.
Meanwhile, popcorn sales up 1,400 percent...
No one fucks with a Biden.
Right now Joe's got Clooney down by the head back behind the White House gym.
This is typically used in a political sense. The follow on is that your political career is over if you fail to dispose of the king. Not so with Brandon. He has Garland's DOJ coiled and ready to strike. Recall NYC Mayor Eric Adams yapped about Biden immigration policy and subsequently was exposed to wrath of Kahn.
"It should be obvious Biden's a pawn and not a king. If the conspirators miss their chance, all they do is blow an election against people who believe in the rule of law."
+100
When Trump gets into the white house to strike at the his majesty, the deep state, he better kill it....metaphorically speaking.
Biden doesn't appear willing to quit the race and, other than Robert Kennedy, no one has stepped forward to proclaim him-/herself as the new potential nominee. In other words, there are a lot of ball-less wonders in the Democrat Party.
Democrats aren't all that organized so their attempt to bring him down similarly isn't organized. How can they be? Their party leader is a senile old man who sleeps half the day. It's a difficult situation. They know he's going to lose but are largely powerless to prevent it. Some are being more honest about it and trying to push him out, while some are simply resigned to stick with him knowing there's no good way to do that. Of course, there are also the Kool Aid drinkers pretending Dear Leader is as strong as ever.
The issue, of course, is they want Biden out of the race, not out of the presidency, even though his current retention of that job puts us all in far graver danger ("Is there another kind?") than does Trump winning. They don't care about the state of our nation so long as they're in charge. They're simply panicking that he's going to lose and they'll be out of power.
Treason doth never prosper: what 's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
Obama and Co. could have stopped Biden a year ago. Go to Jill - remind her that Good Ole' Joe promised to be a "transitional" president and implied he would only serve one term. That's why the Dems got behind him and forced Pete and Amy out. Promise the Presidential Library; a "teaching" gig for her that would pay $1MM for a couple of 2 hour seminars annually at Harvard; $10MM advance on book deals for each one; The Jill Biden "Foundation" (note, NOT a Bill-and-Hillary type Foundation); jobs for the kids throughout Hollywood and Wall Street.
Of course, it wouldn't have been Obama himself - but Nancy, Chuck and Hakeem could have put it together.
I bet Obama is kicking himself now for not having the courage to do what needed to be done to save the Democraticals. Me? I'll be giving him an honorary toast to him tonight.
Not necessarily true when old King Leer is a decrepit and dying old man likely to lose power regardless. And once Joe Biden loses power, he can blame others all he wants, it won't matter. He will be out of the game. His "recriminations" agains the disloyal "traitors" who caused him to lose will fall on deaf ears since he, or even the Biden machine, the Delaware mafia, will never sniff power again.
The Democrats would be better off clearing the decks. Get Biden out of there, give Harris her shot, and start with a clean slate in 2028.
For a party that so thoroughly implemented its long march through the institutions, the fear of a prospective four-year Trump hiccup seems... well, overplayed. So what's the real deal?
The people who saw what was going on for months/years and thought they might need to get rid of him, should have had a better plan. They could screw up a three car parade.
One could look at the Dim's dilemna as follows. The party leadership is geriatric at best. What's on the "bench" is Kamala and the Brylcreem Boy Governor of California, Let the Biden Harris ticket go down the tubes in November. Then in 2028 the party can forget Harris existed---she was a loser in 2020 and 2024 wasn't she? It's possible that the fall of the Biden Harris Warren Sanders Obama progressive wing of the party will result in a cleansing of the Dim ranks, and a more centrist and younger crew can take over. Will that happen? Well a person can dream.
Sounds like a bloodbath is in the offing.
"So what's the real deal"?
Trump already delayed their planned wars by four years. In another six years, which is how long getting the war going with China will realistically take, we probably won't be able to win. I think it's already too late, and we should think about trying to get along with our neighbor across the other side of the big pond, but I don't have a say, and I think that that is the real deal.
The rest of these issues are just log rolling to get the wars done.
"and I think that that is the real deal."
Certainly can't deny that a lot of the people in charge of things seem to really like wars.
He’s like Nixon in his last days.
https://x.com/RNCResearch/status/1811870967230070993
Last year I had a post removed on Facebook for using the phrase, "Let's kill all the lawyers." Their reasoning was that FB did not allow comments expressing violence. I had it within quotes and even referenced it was from Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part II. I complained. No matter. The post was removed. Stupid.
Got to go now. My wife is forcing me to listen to all Biden's lies in this awful speech he is giving in Detroit. My goodness, he is stupid, too.
Blogger Skeptical Voter said...
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It's possible that the fall of the Biden Harris Warren Sanders Obama progressive wing of the party will result in a cleansing of the Dim ranks, and a more centrist and younger crew can take over....
What younger centrists? The younger demoncRATs are the most extremist.
When you've lost George Clooney, your days are probably numbered. Because there's no bigger Never Trump than George. And that video of him saying Trump had no chance to win against Hillary is forever.
That said, this is the party that shafted Bernie Sanders twice. Bernie still caucuses with the Democrats like nothing happened. But the party did shift much further left. Where do you go from there?
"Bernie still caucuses with the Democrats like nothing happened."
Nothing? His property holdings have certainly increased over the years.
"Certainly can't deny that a lot of the people in charge of things seem to really like wars."
War is the only time you can flagrantly act as a tribe in a world where there are no rules, something that the diabolical narcissists and sociopaths in the tribe love. Von Clausewitz suggested that wars are primarily fought for 'what can be gained vs. What can be lost'. Societies that are filled with vigor and energy and determination fight for what can be gained. Societies that are filled with mistrust and affluenza and dominance fight for what can be lost.
The people in charge of things are fighting wars for scraps of margin to shore up 90 years of credit expansion, and the margins get slimmer by the decade.
Omar from The Wire was quoting Emerson?! Who knew?
God, I love this country.
There are two things in play here.
First, Joe Biden as presumptive nominee of the Democrats - that falls within the party rules*.
Second President Biden as president falls within the US Constitution. One way to remove President Biden is impeachment and conviction, and that is permanent removal. The other is under the 25th Amendment which only makes the vice-president acting president. People seem to be conflating the two and they are not the same. Candidate Biden withdrawing from reelection does not mean President Biden has resigned his office.
*How state election law plays here is not something I have the time or desire to get into.
Actually, it comes from Machiavelli, "The Prince.". " Never strike a Prince unless you kill him."
Michael K: Nicolo was articulating a truth that the Sumerians would have understood.
Biden doesn't appear willing to quit the race and, other than Robert Kennedy, no one has stepped forward to proclaim him-/herself as the new potential nominee.
And yet every Democrat representative (not Congress member, just people speaking for the Democrats) goes on and on about their "deep bench."
We told ya Biden was an asshole…
It should be obvious Biden's a pawn and not a king
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what does it say of US politics that Ds were able to king a pawn! over Rs
I believe @Michael K is correct. I had always associated that quote/phrase to Machiavelli. It was in the same Chapter as, paraphrasing, "A prince must be willing to do the most abominable things and to go to hell for his nation.". Google was no help though.
No, Emerson didn't come up with that all by his lonesome, and it's probably as old as politics.
Leonid Ilyich Biden wants to hang onto the presidency to ensure that he and his son avoid prison.
This is especially so since he tried to put the likely next president in prison, and may yet succeed.
Not quite as bad as in the middle ages when the men who lost a battle for leadership were killed slowly by the victors, being force to watch while the victor helped himself to the loser's wife and daughters, but not patty-cake either.
Narr:
No, Emerson didn't come up with that all by his lonesome, and it's probably as old as politics.
Even if he did: Emerson - 1803-1868. It's an old saying.
Joe Biden has willfully allowed well over 12,000,000 undocumented illegal aliens - from all over the world - into the country. For that alone, he should be impeached, if not hanged by the neck for treason.
Why the talk of kings and princes? Wére beyond that, right?
Who’s acting more like a tyrant outside the law? Trump or ol’Biddy?
It’s all too beautiful, tell you what I’ll do.
"Why the talk of kings and princes? We're beyond that, right?"
Oh no. Not at all. Lol. Humans don't change. Much.
The horrible thing about Biden's decline is that it will continue, inexorably, with time. So sure, let's all never mention it again, until he can't walk or talk in a couple more years. He's late stage 4, maybe stage 5, out of the 7-stage dementia scale right now, Where 7 is how he dies, and the rest of 5 & 6 aren't pretty, but are very much unavoidably noticable.
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