No first-term incumbent in American history has ever thrown in the towel this close to the election, and none has done so via a ghost-written tweet, or fax or telegram or Pony Express message while hidden from public view. The purported President of the United States has metamorphosed into one of Donald Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns". Do the authors of "his" tweets run them past him? Does he know he's out of the race? Is he even - by the minimal standards of the last four years - still alive?
Well, "Biden" called in by telephone to a Kamala event yesterday. Just to keep the conspiracists hopping, the Acting President did some rather good acting and started to say Joe was "still on the recording" before correcting herself to "on the call". The audio was more coherent than any Biden appearance from this month's National Misspeaking Tour, leading to rumours that it was a heavily edited cassette from Joe's first Senate race in 1972 or that the AI is not yet sophisticated enough to do a good enough simulation of how bad he is.
One recalls a decade ago the then Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, arguing that 9/11 was staged on the grounds that he'd just seen Avatar and, if the Americans can make that, they can make anything. So, if the live call-in to Kamala was unconvincing, it must be because they want it to be, right?
At which point Frank Biden, who like Hunter appears nude all over the Internet, took a break from his hectic schedule of naked selfies to say that he and Joe will "enjoy whatever time we have left".
Er, wait - so the guy who was "the best Biden ever" ten minutes ago is about to be carried out by the handles? These fellows don't mess around, do they? A strange aside in a Wall Street Journal piece:
Someone with the power to offer absolution has allegedly been sighted in the vicinity of Rehoboth Beach.
Whoever did this has gone Hans Christian Andersen one better: the clothes have no emperor. Which, when you think about it, may be far more advantageous to the powers behind the throne.
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And we haven't even mentioned the far darker drama the Deep State arranged for the chap on the other team: The United States Secret Service spends all afternoon watching a sniper setting up on a rooftop with a clear line of fire ...but lets Trump take the stage anyway. And then the service's director airily tells Congress that oh, no, we didn't keep the recordings of the operation's radio communications...
Is anything real in American politics? Or is it bollocks all the way down now? I believe it was the late Christopher Hitchens who said that politics is showbusiness for ugly people. The people are getting uglier, and so is the show. The next four months will be nuttier, and far likely bloodier. Me four weeks ago:
The guys running this soap opera know the ending they're working up to, and any unexpected plot twists en route are designed to serve that end.https://www.steynonline.com/14465/unburdened-by-what-has-been