Writes Robin Givhan, in "Biden was empath-in-chief. Can a divided country offer him empathy?
In the face of Biden’s cancer diagnosis, does the country have the capacity for empathy despite the political rancor, distrust, alternative facts and lies?" (WaPo).
Shame on us for wanting to know the truth about what happened? Who was President these past few years? We're supposed to sink into a pool of respectful silence and not demand to know? We're not supposed to be skeptical about the timing of the cancer news, which seems so perfectly aimed to shut us up about Tapper's book and the Hur recordings?
And what is this "redemption tour of sorts"? I had not noticed. I had to ask A.I., which pointed me to his "paid speeches, interviews (e.g., his appearance on The View), and international trips (e.g., attending Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome)." He wasn't waiting for years to pass, wounds to heal, and nostalgia to set in. He and his enablers were doing positive propaganda. Why should we shut up? Answer: because he has an aggressive cancer. Of course, we feel the silencing power.
What ugly people we are to still want the truth! Who was President these past few years?!
Posts
139 comments:
If we had been worthy of him, he wouldn't have gotten this terrible thing, and everything would have been fine. It's all our fault.
Got it. Keep winning those hearts and minds, Robin.
I used to think the laws of math always had to be true...that 1+1 had to equal 2. But it seems that there is the attempt to guilt us into accepting the answer is 3. The super power of forced compassion trumps (ha, yes, there is that "t" word) all ordinary perfectly justifiable questions. JD is right... although since I believe even the suddenly announced extreme case of cancer is manipulative, I find the compassion part is not as strong as it should be.
The "empath-in-chief" line on Biden is such ridiculous bullshit. He had no reputation whatsoever for being a touchy-feely empathic politician! He was always the glib blowhard, happy to play the political game and alternately work with a screw people over as the politics of the moment dictated, and willing to consign millions to sectarian war and bloodshed (partition Iraq) if it would help extract the United States from a foreign entanglement he no longer supported. And his efforts to show "empathy" are typically cack-handed. He has one play in his playbook and it was "let me tell you how something I experienced is just like what you're going through," even if he has to lie about the particulars (e.g. drunk driver killing his family, son dying in Iraq, etc.) to make it fit.
This empathetic Biden nonsense is a recent invention, dating, I think, to some point midway through Obama's Presidency. Do the people repeating it actually believe it? Have they forgotten what Biden was like when he was still himself?
Robin Givhan said…
“Biden was empath-in-chief.”
If you’re really wanting to use a “*path-in-chief” term, “psychopath-in-chief” would be more a bit more accurate way to describe the administrative decisions of his presidency.
He sure had a lot of empathy for all of those men, Ukrainian and Russian whose lives were ended in their prime, or who were maimed, or the wives and mothers of these men, the ones taking care of the wounded, the uncles, the cousins. Millions of people whose lives were just ruined. If he had made 1/100th the effort to prevent this war that Trump is making to try to end it, it would never have happened. But the "empath in chief" has had this war on the drawing board, with his neocon friends, for a decade or two at least.
Right now, today, probably hundreds are going to die or be wounded. So no, I am not waking up in the morning feeling bad for Joe Biden.
Round up all of these clowns, media included. See that they are decently treated. See that they are decently fed and then make sure they are decently shot. These people are common outlaws, nothing more.
Who actually signed those fake pre-emptive pardons?
It certainly wasn't Joe "Alzheimer's" Biden.
The empathy market needs an agreeable rate of exchange. Let's start with 1-to-1 (one unit of empathy = one unit of truth) and see where the demand curve takes us. Give the current mood of the truth consumers, the rate is head north of 1-to-10.
"But it seems that there is the attempt to guilt us into accepting the answer is 3"
It's that scene from Star Trek where they keep asking Picard how many fingers they are holding up to him, cribbed from 1984, but it's a good image. That's what the press is today. Demanding that we see the number of fingers that they say that they are holding up.
All Biden all the time here of late.
Glad he got 86'ed and will never be in power again, not sure why he is still living rent free in so many Boomer heads.
It seems to me, that cruel neutrality notwithstanding, these are YOUR Democrats, Ann Althouse. Or do you now renounce them? You have supported their causes, consumed the propaganda of their media organs, and eaten their Whole Foods cheese. People who historically supported Republicans KNEW they would be disappointed by their votes. You excoriated your “right-wing squatters”, while tolerating left-wing posters who appear to be paid shills or lacking in ability to construct reasonable arguments. When did you realize you had been had? Yes, who WAS the decider the last four years? And why will people keep voting for a party of frightful deceivers?
Robin Givhan is smart. She knows she's playing a role. She knows her job is to firehose us with bullsh!t. We know her job is to firehose bullsh!t. We know the entire corporate media spent four years firehosing bullsh!t.
All this bullsh!t used to be enraging. Now it's just depressing.
One can feel bad for Biden and at the same time be angry that he was a puppet -- willing or (as appears more likely) without knowing it -- during his Presidency. And none of the "tell-alls" are telling us the most important part. Who was really in charge?
I forgot about pardoning Dr Fauci, back dated strategically to cover his decision to violate the will of Congress on gain of function, and green light the research to tinker with a harmless to humans bat virus and splice in the code to make it infect humans, not only that, but it would no longer infect bats, and apparently they are telling us that this occurred as a natural evolution among bats, that the virus evolved in bats to the point that it would no longer infect them, but was ideally coded to infect humans, then made the jump in a "wet market."
"How many fingers am I holding up!"
What else have they hidden and how soon will it drop and splatter?
Lying liars continue to lie.
Vice President JD Vance argued that it was possible to have two thoughts about Biden at once: to wish him good health while also, essentially, calling him a terrible president in the same breath.
JD Vance is remarkably intelligent. That Biden’s administration was a debacle is (inadvertently) demonstrated when one asks Democrats for a list of successes they can only talk about legislation that got passed, as though managing to pass legislation when your party controls both Houses of Congress is a big deal. Legislation was passed to address our country’s infrastructure — where did the money go? What was it spent on? Can we claw any of it back? We already know that the Inflation Reduction Act increased inflation, so thanks heaps.
Robin Givhan calls Biden the “empath-in-chief.” Huh? He sure showed a lot of empathy for the soldiers who were killed during the rout that our withdrawal from Afghanistan turned into — remember him standing there, checking his watch?
Can a divided country offer him empathy? Maybe Robin should start with her own side. She asks whether, in the face of Biden’s cancer diagnosis, the country has the capacity for empathy despite the political rancor, etc? Lefty extremist Taylor Lorenz has already answered by posting the following on X:
”Hopefully he rots in hell and rests in piss.”
So call up your friend, Robin, and talk to her before you talk to us.
And Althouse is damned right. Who was running the country while Joe was mentally checked out? A reckoning is needed, and hopefully coming.
@D.D. Driver
Your comment is good except for the last word, which is cause for deletion on this blog. I want to be consistent in banning the word, so it's got to go. Please repost your comment with the word edited out.
The guy was a blowhard horse's ass for his entire half-century career in Washington. Empath? More like primrose path.
And, in any case, I will delete it an hour from now.
Mark wants us to "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" as the curtain has been drawn back and the craven partisan Democratic press is now naked for all to see.
I don't blame him. He wants to move on from a ploy that didn't work out and hopes we will fall for it again in the future.
@Oso Negro
I don't belong to a political party. You should be a lot more careful about assuming things about me.
"The "empath-in-chief" line on Biden is such ridiculous bullshit. He had no reputation whatsoever for being a touchy-feely empathic politician!"
But all those photographs of him with little girls... they were touchy-feely as hell.
History will not be kind to Biden. His own party is disowning him and using him as the scapegoat of all their problems. This will only get worse with time.
"I don't belong to a political party. You should be a lot more careful about assuming things about me."
I didn't even vote for Biden (for President).
"Sharp as a tack". Oh sure. The Biden "presidency" and the people that covered up this trainwreck has to be one of the most shameful things in American history in my lifetime, if not in the history of the Republic.
My history of voting in presidential elections during the existence of this blog: 1. Bush, 2. Obama, 3. Romney, 4. Hillary, 5. Abstained, 6. Voted but never revealed my vote, not even to Meade.
“only history can define his presidency.” History will judge Joe Biden as the worst President in our history.
They really did test the limits of the bullshit that they could feed us with Biden, didn't they. These are the same people who repealed the Smith-Mundt prohibitions on the government using propaganda on the American people, err, excuse me, "modernized" them.
Oso Negro, I don't think you have been reading this blog very carefully - or perhaps at all. You seem to have missed the last several years of Ann's posts.
I reject the premise that Bien was "empathetic". He was a sleazy politician who fabricated large parts of his backstory and demonized a huge portion of the citizens he supoosedly served while enriching himself.
Uncurious about Althouse's votes. Even good votes will have been for the wrong reason.
What’s it all about… Balki?
"Glad he got 86'ed and will never be in power again"
So now I see where all of the "They regret their votes for Trump!" propaganda is coming from. It's plain old garden variety projection propaganda.
The pride and hubris is so pervasive and so extreme that only the political party and winning matters.
6. Voted but never revealed my vote, not even to Meade.
Yes, but you admit to voting for Hillary Clinton, and that says all Meade ever needs to know about you.
The people that ran the White House for the previous 4 years don’t have cancer. Why does Biden having cancer give them a pass? Hur and Garland already gave Biden a pass for explaining his unlawful activities. An autopen gave Biden’s family a pass. Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn, Anthony Bernal, Ron Klain and Annie Tomasini don’t have a pass and questions need to be answered.
Still thinking about the Empath in Chief title, remembering Joe angrily shaking his fist for no reason, at the citizen opposition in a Dante-like setting of his choosing, with the Praetorian Marine guard standing empathically behind him. Still reflecting on all of the times Joe tactically reflected on the tragic cancer death of Beau in (insert setting-of-convenience here), or the tragic traffic death of his wife at the hands of a drunk-but-sober driver. Joe had a tragedy ready for any occasion, if he thought sympathy would be useful.
The revelation of Joe's diagnosis was at the discretion of the family machinery, and its timing as always is purely self-serving, as dictated by the 100% reliable and self-serving track record of Biden's slimy, indelible history. Psychopath-in-chief is more accurate, given this history - and so using the 'empath' badging is consistent in its own way, too.
Empathy for the sociopathy? I’m afraid it’s gone beyond that.
What form will the Reckoning take? Should it be the case that these media clowns ALL take a knee in supplication for assisting in the biggest fraud and coverup in American history? Should they be allowed to resign from their positions in disgrace and retire to Boca? Should things just stay on their current course and the dominant media continue to wither and pass away from its self-inflicted terminal asshattery?
These are questions that need answers…
not sure why he is still living rent free in so many Boomer heads.
Really? Are you not? Shades of the laptop - "nobody's interested in Hunter Biden's dick pics." Let me quote our host:
"Who was President these past few years?!"
Also: "empath-in-chief"?! Wow.
This empathy schtick is civility bs.
I’m of the belief that Dr. Jill was behind this whole thing. She wants to get rid of Joe ASAP so she can enjoy all that bitcoin.
“He's just a rabid dog that got old.”
No, Rusty, Old Yeller’s egg-sucking ways took the old, demented hound down his current path. The Good Lord has seen fit to put him down to save the world.
But now, the old hound’s owners must be separated from the herd and held to account.
@Althouse (6:39), neither Oso Negro nor I care which party, if any, you belong to. Your politics are further left of center than you perceive, probably because living in such an extremist city as Madison distorts your view of where the center actually is. It says volumes about how far towards extremism the democrats have drifted under Obama and Biden (and during the Trump Resistance) that even you are fed up.
But you would not have voted for Hillary nor advocated for evil Ben Wikler if you were anywhere close to the political center.
" “only history can define his presidency.” History will judge Joe Biden as the worst President in our history. "
Depends on who writes the history.
"Empath-in-Chief"... Only libtard Party members use such silly, childish expressions. Sophomoric shitheads swarm to the Democrat Party.
I'm not optimistic that we will ever know the truth of the Biden presidency. Obama's and Clinton's involvement, the level of corruption, who got what from the big spending bills, what foreign governments were and possibly still are interfering there are too many with too much to lose for the truth to come out.
Here is our empath in chief doing his best impression of a 'regular Joe'. Empathetic Speech?.
We literally do not hate our 'thoughtful' media voices enough. They are both obtuse and arrogant. An awful way to go through life.
Shame on us for wanting to know the truth about what happened?
A wise woman once said: You can do a lot of subordinating of women by stimulating our fear that we may be regarded as unkind.
Althouse said: But all those photographs of him with little girls... they were touchy-feely as hell.
There must be something wrong with me because I saw those photos as being really, really creepy as hell.
“ Who was President these past few years?!”
Short answer: No one. We were run by a cabal who hated the U.S. and wanted to bring us down. But not until after enriching themselves in the process.
Don't ask me, I'm only garbage.
Nostalgia tour? Are they referring to his four years as "POTUS," which were nostalgia for the shit-show of the Obama years?
We are told we shouldn’t inquire into Biden’s illegalities because he was mentally incompetent. We are told we shouldn’t inquire into Biden’s mental incompetency because of his medical problems. We are told we shouldn’t inquire into Biden’s medical problems because he’s dying. We are told we should only recognize Biden’s greatness and condemn Republicans for attacking a dying man.
Did the leadership of the Dem Party actually think they could pull this off? Or were they "in the bunker" with the sound of artillery getting louder, pushing imaginary armies around on an (electoral college) map that had no connection with reality?
this shambling wanted to proscribe ie crush the domestic opposition, see the red wedding speech, of course thats who the Soviets who he was dutiful tool for in the Cold War, would have done,
I have zero empathy for Biden and his family. Reap what you sow.
what starmer and co have tried to do in Western Europe, the DFV most recently with the AFD
Good riddance. The most mediocre of us to ever become President. Then 4 years of him not really being President. It sucks that he will die with that form of cancer, but we aren’t required to mourn him.
History is going to be incredibly harsh to the Americans who voted against Trump, or tried to avoid scrutiny for doing so. Just a reminder, the Biden regime sent endless lawfare after President Trump, and tried to murder him when the legal trials failed.
The Democrats in general and Biden in particular are in for a real bad time.
“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us”
This is how you persuade reluctant citizens???
Funny, I don’t remember Congress voting to enact legislation to require corporations to threaten employees with termination if they don’t comply with vax mandates. That’s some dark shit.
https://youtu.be/rUaqZa609EY?si=WjCofJQTpYevRZGM
On a human level can’t help but feel sorry for Biden. Here is a guy who lusted after the office for decades only to become the worst of all.
I have no doubt that every cogent moment that Biden has is consumed by the knowledge that history will not look favorably on him.
When not thinking of that he will obsess over the fact that he is reviled by everybody. A man whose fragile ego demanded that he be loved cannot stand up to that.
Somewhat like Nebucchanezzar grazing in a field, but he at least found some wisdom,
LOL, Biden is a sociopath. I know a young woman who works with non-neurotypical young people, and she will tell you that they make up 1% of the population, whatever country you are in, and that they are very scary as children, before they learn to hide it. Biden doesn't give a rip about anybody but people who can help him in some way. Still you would have voted for him again, a second time. Why should anybody care what you have to say?
"what starmer and co have tried to do in Western Europe"
Democracy is over in Western Europe. The warning of a famous European, Nietzsche, has come true, they have become a monster because they thought that they were slaying a monster. But really, they only needed the "monster" to frighten their own population into submission.
@Althouse - Do you deny eating the cheese from Whole Foods? I am prepared to accept whatever you say about that I realize it’s now fashionable to create distance between oneself and the latest top of the food chain Democrats, but the apparatchiks of the Democratic Party are the ones who built the organization that delivered that mess. I understand that you prefer to maintain certain mysteries, but there are some fairly astute people in your commentariat and we read what you have been writing these past 20 years. You have bristled at suggestions in the past, but here is one anyway: create a 20 question Althouse’s Opinions Survey, put it on Survey Monkey and invite long term readers to respond. Don’t even tell us the results! But I bet we know you a lot better than you might suppose we do. Kindest Regards, Oso. p.s. good luck creating interesting multiple choice answers if you go that route
It's possible to feel bad for Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis and also be angry that he decided to run for a second term despite his cognitive decline. I'm angrier at his staff, family, and others--especially the press--for hiding this from us and suggesting that to say anything about this issue was to be conned by MAGA. Idiots.
It isn't intellectually inconsistent to hope Scott Adams somehow finds a miracle cure for his prostate cancer while hoping Joe Biden dies in agony as he rots from his asshole in. Joe Biden has always been a self-serving cretin- I recognized this going on 50 years ago.
@ Emilie - I read this blog every goddamn day. I will read it until she quits or dies or I die.
That's what we do after a plane crash, right? Move on. We don't investigate the cause of the tragedy, seek out its root cause ruthlessly, in order to avoid it happening again. Oh, that's what Mark would do if he ran the NTSB.
"300 souls lost? Oh well, move on! Getter luck next time flyers!" - Mark
Wow, Guitar Joe, were you in a coma for the last 5 years?
"Should it be the case that these media clowns ALL take a knee in supplication for assisting in the biggest fraud and coverup in American history? "
"Mistakes were made. Can't we all just agree to move on from this?" is about all you can expect from these people (see: covid).
It goes way beyond Jill, she is just one more opportunist. It's Dick Cheney, Wolfowitz, even George W Bush, the whole neocon crowd, who are now perfectly comfortable and invited into the circle of power of the Democratic Party.
@ Althouse- I didn’t say you were a Democrat, I said these were YOUR Democrats - to whit, the ones you have supported or worse, helped fashion in law school. I’m not a member of a party either, if I’m not abstaining I am voting Republican, and they almost always disappoint me. The Democrats specifically hate people like me and actively work to end my way of life.
Jill Biden is to blame, and she deserves no empathy. Joe is feeble-minded and was intentionally isolated. When your wife praises you for answering all the questions at the debate, you might think it went well.
It's chilling to think that cancer diagnosis and treatment may have been withheld from Joe just to keep him politically viable.
Re: Big Mike’s 7:25 comment - I concur
The slime on the Biden family car's windshield was on the inside.
a little empathy here, but not much. Biden was not a great choice in 2020, but in the end the only rational choice.
Unfortunately his, and enablers, obstinancy left us saddled with the irrational (anti-rational?) choice in 2024.
sympathy for his diagnosis, which probably happened years ago,, but the mental decay was clear almost from the outset of his fraudulency, (thats how they dubbed rutherford hayes, who was a much better man)
Here’s another clue for you all - Grok says 74 of 100 Biden’s aides also worked in the Obama White House.
Teh Walrus was Barry?
Speaking of clues, you should go garner one, jim.
We should reserve our empathy for the victims of Biden's failed policies not for Biden or any of those that supported him aided him and hid his infirmity. He is and always was a POS.
I wish people would observe the difference between "empathy" and "sympathy" But the internet destroys words through spreading their misuse quickly as widely as their proper use, which is locked in the past in old books like a fly in amber.
It's like "walleye chop," a term that came into use, I believe, by the open water walleye fisherman on the Great Lakes years before the internet, to describe a specific condition, and got misused and abused on the internet because it sounded cool, until it's meaning, apparently, has been lost, except I suppose, among the successful open water walleye fisherman on places like Lake Erie.
The internet is the destroyer of words.
Joe Biden et al was our punishment for accepting a corrupted 2020 election process. There is no suffering great enough for those who facilitated this fraud upon America.
Biden’s chief of staff was nicknamed Prime Minister.
kaKAW…Destroyer of Brain Cells.
Let’s not pretend Biden has “supporters”
These are just emotional beings who can’t stand Trump and would rather see the entire nation suffer and fail than to see Trump succeed in improving our situation.
We’ve not scratched the surface in revealing all the fraud and misdeeds of this stain of an Administration.
In the Dem Party, no one is responsible for anything, not even the President. This diffusion of responsibility is deliberate.
If it’s true that Biden’s cancer diagnosis occurred only after he’s been out of office, doesn’t that mean that it was caught early and if caught early Biden has a good chance of recovery?
My empathy tank is really low. I’m not wasting any on someone who has access to the best healthcare possible and because of that great healthcare is going to be fine. Unless they are not telling us the whole truth again.
Here at the “home” in California the community college puts on a program to promote civility in discussing current affairs. The Biden dementia was barely mentioned during the “both sides” presentation, but the plane from Qatar - oh the plane! For the lefties everything is filtered through Trump hatred especially the most damaging political fraud of the last 50 years.
Of course I have empathy for Joe Biden, I am a man approaching 70 which says that there is a very high chance that I have prostate issues. What I don't have for him is sympathy.
“Who was President these past few years?!”
You might consider that the answer is Joe Biden.
I recall thinking when George W. Bush was elected President that he wasn’t smart enough to be a Democratic President but he might be just smart enough to be a Republican President. Likewise, Joe Biden may not have had the physical stamina to be a MAGA unitary executive President, but he did have enough to be a traditional President, who puts good cabinet secretaries in place and lets them do their jobs.
Have you seen the recent BBC interview? Joe Biden did fine, without Jill Biden, who did upstage him on The View.
The Hur interview was terrible, from the point of view of projecting Presidential competence. But from the point of view of evading a partisan prosecutor’s questions, while also coming across as well-meaning, even the New York Post admits that Biden was brilliant.
That interview should be taught in law schools. If Donald Trump had been able to pull something like that off during the Mueller investigation, he would have had a much more successful first term. Not in Trump’s repertoire.
As for the palace guards doing the dastardly deed of guarding the palace, have we gotten so used to the people running out of the Trump administration screaming that the norm seems unusual? Oh, but we must have their names!
No one seems to be asking the question that’s at the heart of the 2024 election. Why did Joe Biden agree to debate Donald Trump in June 2024? That’s not in the usual schedule of Presidential debates, and Biden could have very easily used J6 to refuse any debates with Trump.
The Occam’s Razor answer is that Joe Biden decided to let the public decide whether his candidacy should continue. In the end, he didn’t hide anything.
Even while President, Biden reminded me of the LOTR character King Theoden, the feeble tool of Wormtoung. A figurehead president is the best solution for our enemies. No accountability, no transparency, but all of the power aimed at his opponents.
Of course I have empathy for Joe Biden, I am a man approaching 70...
Never send to know for whom the Prostate Problem Klaxon ahoogahs; it ahoogahs for thee.
Jaq, at 9:19, rightfully laments the loss of the distinction between "empathy" and "sympathy," but fails to observe the difference between "it's" and "its", (it's [sic"] meaning.")
Empathy huh? The whole family and his staff need to be chained up in a DC dungeon. That’s how much empathy I have.
Yeah, and it was probably underlined squiggly by my browser too.
Left Bank hasn't received the surrender orders yet.
Bob Boyd writes, "In the Dem Party, no one is responsible for anything, not even the President."
Not to worry, at this very moment, Jake Tapper is researching another book, his chef-d'œuvre, that will expose the answers to all the questions raised by Biden's non-presidency and name of villain behind the throne whose actions and inactions so nearly destroyed the social and economic fabric of this great nation. Though still early in its preparation and not expected to be released for sale until the spring of '28, a anonymous Penguin editor has leaked a name, or more precisely, the initials of Tapper's chief culprit and conspirator -- J.D.V.
The internet exists LB, so cool story bro, but nah.
Left Bank of the Charles said...
No one seems to be asking the question that’s at the heart of the 2024 election. Why did Joe Biden agree to debate Donald Trump in June 2024? That’s not in the usual schedule of Presidential debates, and Biden could have very easily used J6 to refuse any debates with Trump.
The Occam’s Razor answer is that Joe Biden decided to let the public decide whether his candidacy should continue. In the end, he didn’t hide anything.
Biden took the debate because he was losing. At no point did the internal polls of either side have him anywhere near Trump. They have admitted this.
Democrats knew they were not going to be able to mail in enough ballots to steal 2024 like they did 2020. They had to do something.
What is really illuminating about Left Bank's post is that he thinks Biden is a smart person.
Republican voters at least recognize the mediocrity of Bush. Democrat voters on average are actually stupid enough to think Biden was ever a smart person.
Uh-oh! Someone's been subordinating Robin Givhan!
FJB, in the a$$. And may his minions and puppet master suffer as well.
Say, left bank, "You keep using that phrase 'well-meaning.' I do not think it means what you think it means"
Most of Biden's "gaffes" were times where he accidentally told the truth. I really do think that Joe Biden was at one time quite mentally adept, he was able to say things that were the exact and precise opposite of what he was really thinking, almost every time he spoke publicly. What is amazing, and a real testimony to his mental acuity in the past, and the reason he rose so far, was his gift for saying the exact opposite of what he was really thinking, with such feeling.
Yuck I just saw that "Empath in chief" line and nearly barfed. Biden has always been a cruel disgusting man with no empathy. None at all. He dragged his wounded sons out of the hospital to hold a press-conference so he could garner sympathy from his wife's death. The Hur interview reveals him hiding behind Beau's dead body to obfuscate his theft of classified documents. Then he goes out and blames Hur, saying he brought up Beau's death. Disgusting opportunist!
Empathy? Biden has always been the poster child for cruel partisan lying and scheming. An honor he shares with his award for being the dumbest member of Congress at the time (Crocket was not elected yet).
An empathetic appeal to a sympathetic resonance and cover-up of a Ka-catastrophic choice with "benefits".
This is one of those posts that benefits from
AA's system of tabbing elements of the post for cross-reference. Click on "Robin Givhan" and you will see a succession of 1984-level propaganda pieces for whatever happens to be the Democratic Party line that day. No wonder that Givhan, a fashion writer, won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Most journalism is part of a conspiracy against the public. Givhan is just one example among many.
All political positions aside, I do not understand how Biden got a reputation as some kind of sensitive and noble leader. He is an intellectual lightweight, a serial fabulist, and transparently self-centered. His actions were never directed to his vaunted long career in “public” service; he was always self-serving. Ick.
"What difference, at this point, does it make?"
But you would not have voted for Hillary nor advocated for evil Ben Wikler if you were anywhere close to the political center.
In 2016 Trump was such an unknown quality. No one knew how he would govern. But you missed one yuuuuge clue from this blog, the Althouse quote, oft repeated, "I'm for boring." And if you look back at 2016 honestly, Clinton is hands down the most boring candidate on the ticket.
The comment by Left Bank of the Charles is illuminating, but not to libtards. What Biden and all Democrat Party members have that Trump will never have is a propaganda press and a supine constituency.
Republican voters want the best for America, which is why we have for decades been seeking leaders outside the corrupt and anti-American beltway.
Democrat Party voters only care that the Democrat Party is in power. They couldn't care less for their country and they actively hate non-Party members.
Screw Givhan. If it was DJT or Vance or any of their political opposition they'd be dancing in the streets.
Tracey Ullman - A Sociopath at a Job Interview
"I would prefer that we move on from my conviction for crimes against humanity."
"Never let a crisis go to waste".
The unofficial motto of the Democrat party. Biden was on the offensive to salvage his legacy with media doing the worlds largest CYA effort to try to paper over their partisanship. (Cristo ain't got nuttin' on the Dems/MSM).
Looks like a crisis from here, for both those agents. (Kissinger should get his wish and they BOTH should use).
But, AHA! Along comes cancer. Wash away the ruinous policies. Wash away the "Who the hell was POTUS? Wash away the "I know nothink, nothink" from the Sgt. Schultz media.
No, pity the old empath, focus on his personal tragedy. (Like his son dying in Iraq. Or th4e "drunk driver" that....
Feh!
"Shame on us for wanting to know the truth about what happened? "
The whole thing cries out for the 'civility bullshit' treatment.
I remember when Rush was diagnosed with cancer, the libs celebrated and when he died, they wanted a national holiday. I don't ever forgive them for what they did to the country. I'm glad FJB is dying and I hope it's painful. I hope Jill and Hunter fie the same way. I wish a slow painful death to all the dems for the last 4 years. They purposely killed Americans and didn't think anything about it. Afghanistan, covid, illegal aliens, nope, those drms can die.
All Brandon's crazy stories and multiple background tales? I recognized them as being set pieces from the rubber chicken circuit. Each one carefully written for group he was meeting, performed multiple times identically or slight variations. These were all done before digital recording an internet storage.
The depth of how far they were embedded in his memory can be seen by fluidly he could tell his "just-so" stories compared to trying to communicate on a current issue.
Biden was America's Brezhnev. And nobody felt empathy for Brezhnev.
Balfegor said "This empathetic Biden nonsense is a recent invention, dating, I think, to some point midway through Obama's Presidency."
I seem to remember the empathetic Biden being a thing during the 2020 campaign as a contrast to Trump who had no empathy according to the media. I remember it being parroted by some liberal friends who are CNN watchers. Google Trends shows the term reached it's peak in September 2020.
Anyway, empathy isn't necessarily bad on its own, but it is often used to shortcut reason and logic and can lead to bad decisions.
They're demanding empathy even when the situation doesn't call for it.
The thing about empathy is that it shouldn't be allowed to supercede logic and common sense.
It's totally possible to feel sorry for Biden and still be angry at him (and his inner circle) for what happened..
"Empath in chief"??
What arrant horse shit.
He gave perhaps the most contemptuous and divisive speech by a President in my adult memory.
Who was the President these past four years? Yes, we are allowed to ask that. Are we supposed to not ask it because he has cancer? That's pretty demeaning to people with cancer. Cancer doesn't define them. It's not to be mocked. It's terrible to mock someone's mortality and pain. But it doesn't make him any less responsible for his choices.
They hope that Biden will die for the sins of the DNC.
Empath in chief my fat Aunt Fannie! The only empathy that Slow Joe had was for his next pudding cup, or the next bagful of boodle delivered by Hunter.
Anybody who appoints and supports avicious, corrupt traitors like Merick Garland and Al Mayorkas is NOT, in any meaning of the word, an empath.
Glad he got 86'ed and will never be in power again, not sure why he is still living rent free in so many Boomer heads.
Maybe because some of us would like to know who was actually running the show for the last four years.
That ever cross your mind?
Biden's idea of empathy was to always bring up his own losses. Possibly that was sincere in the beginning but it became an easy routine for him to fall into. Was he extending empathy or asking (or demanding) it? Eventually people saw through it.
It seemed to me like Joe was practicing a kind of emotional blackmail. He wanted us to pity him for losing his first wife, daughter and son, for Joe's having always been underestimated and laughed at, for his father's sacrifices and sufferings, for the family sitting around the kitchen table and staring up at the sky and wondering how they were going to pay the rent -- and now for Joe's cancer.
Because of all that we were supposed to give him his "Precious," the office that he had always wanted -- and now we are supposed to pity him and forgive and forget. If I remember Theodore White's book correctly, in 1960 Richard Nixon, running against rich boy Jack Kennedy, mentioned his parents having been too poor to buy him a pony when he was young, and the media skewered Nixon for wandering around the country wanting the presidency because he didn't get the pony. Nixon, in this matter as in so many others, had nothing on Biden.
"That ever cross your mind?"
They are just throwing sh*t against the wall to see what sticks.
Joe Biden, master empathizer, was promoted by none other than Hillary Shelob Clinton just prior to the June debate in an op ed, wasn't it?
Fortunately the old prick is too demented to understand what his "friends" are saying about him lately.
Speaking of the purported Redemption tour, and speaking as a Catholic, it appalls me to see Trump and Vance abused by Pope Leo and his predecessor, as Biden, Obama, Pelosi etc. are embraced by the Pope and the Catholic hierarchy while supporting second trimester abortion, and, in Obama's case, as an Illinois State legislator, being the sole legislator in that grotesquerie from any Party who didn't oppose an even more extreme born-alive-then-kill abortion bill -- he voted present -- as he did on most controversial issues, conniving to leave as little information on his true beliefs as possible.
Shame on them. But they will reckon with a higher power than I, and I'm a Sicilian Alzheimer's type person: the last thing I will remember is my list of enemies, etc.
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