THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES

Most of us are familiar with the Hans Christian Andersen story about the emperor who was tricked into walking down the street naked, arrogantly assuming he was wearing clothes invisible to those who are stupid and incompetent.

The Emperor’s New Clothes – Wikipedia

Most of us realize that the emperor was “exposed” as being the one truly stupid. But one notes that even after this becomes obvious to everyone, he continued down the street walking more proudly then ever. But it is important to realize that many more people were involved. His officials and even the emperor actually visited the looms, where the imaginary clothes were being made, and ignored the obvious fact that they were totally empty. In addition, the town people went along with the charade, until a young girl pointed out the obvious. Then everyone, but the emperor started laughing.

Han Christian Andersen did not invent this story, it was apparently based on a 1335 story from a Spanish medieval collection. It may even date back to Aesop and even Persian folktales. The point being that the arrogance and stupidity of people in power is not exactly new. Part of the problem is that few people in direct contact with really powerful people often lack the courage to tell them an uncomfortable truth.

One could write another folk tale about Joe Biden, and it would be remarkably similar. There are a lot of people, close to Biden, who see the truth about the man, but they are unwilling to confront him and are more than willing to try and deceive everyone else. The result is a man who is increasingly willing to believes he is uniquely brilliant and qualified to be President of the United States without regard to any evidence to the contrary. This would explain why he keeps telling the same stupid lies about supposed personal accomplishments that are easily discredited. He has convinced himself that they are true, and no one tell him the lies are beyond obvious. It explains why he was stupid enough to slam Donald Trump for having classified documents, apparently oblivious to the fact that he also had similar documents in unsecure locations. Then he stupidly tried to say that since these were in the same location where he stored his prized Corvette, he was shocked to learn that this was not actually a good thing.

Now at the point where this has been disclosed. Today the FBI is searching his Delaware Beach House. This isn’t happening on a Friday, to avoid the news cycle, it is happening Wednesday morning, a time guaranteed to receive widespread media attention. This search cannot end well. If they don’t find any documents, everyone will question why it took them six months to do the search. If they do find classified documents, it will be impossible to explain away. All’s well that ends, well. The illusion of the Biden competency is now on full display, increasingly obvious to everyone, in both parties. He may continue walking, proudly, naked, down the street, but instead of applause he is hearing nothing but increasingly loud laughter. He is in the process of being laughed off the stage.

Normally, everyone would unite behind his replacement, the Vice President. But the Vice President is Kamala Harris, and not one thinks she is remotely capable of handling the job. This has brought us full circle to the fiasco of the 2020 election. In the desperate all-out effort to defeat Donald Trump, little consideration was given to the consequences of putting someone as stupid and incompetent as Joe Biden in the White House. Even less consideration was given to the lack of options available to change this, in the event things went south. Well, welcome to south, with still no viable options available to fix this.

When Woodrow Wilson became incapacitated because of a stroke, his doctor lied about it , his wife took over, and congress went along with the charade. As early as 1792, congress anticipated the need for a line of succession. The constitution says the vice president becomes president if the elected one dies or becomes debilitated.  In 1886 another succession act was passed that, after the Vice President, replaced the leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives with the Presidential Cabinet, starting with the Secretary of State. It changed again on July 18, 1947, when President Harry Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act. That changes the order of succession from the vice president to the Speaker of the House and then the President Pro Tempore of the Senate. After the Kennedy assassination, the 25th Amendment was signed in 1967. This puts the Vice President immediately in power if the President is incapacitated, even temporarily. It was invoked during Ronald Reagans surgery for colon cancer and for George W. Bush’s colonoscopies in 2002 and 2007.

But none of these involved a Vice President so obviously incapable of being President. This times everyone knows the emperor has no clothes, the problem is that no viable solution to the problem is even on the horizon.

TDM