You may have noticed a consistent pattern where conservative, alternative, or other non-mainstream media notice something – there’s circumstantial evidence indicating Covid-19 may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, Jussie Smollett’s story doesn’t add up, cloth masks aren’t all that effective, the Border Patrol didn’t whip Haitians, Rebekah Jones isn’t really a whistleblower – and that observation or contention is denounced by the left and mainstream media outlets as wrong, inaccurate, even a malevolent lie. And then, a few months or a year later, the mainstream media catches up and realizes, “oh, wait, that contention was right all along.”
It now turns out that Joe Biden is not such an empathetic and caring guy, despite what you were told in 2019 and 2020 and much of early 2021. You may recall in August of last year, certain allegedly maniacal and irresponsible voices like myself contended, “The president whose empathy is endlessly touted now sounds cold and dismissive when asked about Afghans’ desperately crowding into American planes or falling to their deaths.”
Now, in the midst of a 20,000-word piece in the Atlantic, George Packer reveals that Joe Biden isn’t such an empathetic guy after all.
During the 2020 campaign, an interviewer repeated some of these quotes to Biden and asked if he believed he would bear responsibility for harm to Afghan women after a troop withdrawal and the return of the Taliban. Biden bristled and his eyes narrowed. “No, I don’t!” he snapped, and put his thumb and index finger together. “Zero responsibility.”
Human rights alone were not grounds for committing American troops—it was a solid argument, based on national interest. But it didn’t explain the hardness, the combativeness. Questions about Afghanistan and its people made Biden rear up and dig in. During the 2020 campaign he was seen as deeply empathetic, but the fierce attachments of “Middle-Class Joe” are parochial. They come from personal ties, not universal concerns: his family, his hometown, his longtime advisers, his country, its troops. The Green Beret interpreter and the girl in the unfinished schoolroom now stood outside the circle of empathy.
Joe Biden isn’t such an empathetic guy after all? No Shinola, Sherlock. His oft-touted empathy disappears for Americans who are wary about the vaccines, parents who are tired of masking their kids, and families who are fed up with public schools remaining closed long after private schools figured out how to reopen and operated safely. Biden has no empathy for parents concerned about what their kids are being taught in school. He scoffed at people who warned him about inflation. If Biden has any empathy for those concerned about high levels of illegal immigration, he hides it well. A truly empathetic man would try to avoid making promises he can’t keep, instead of pledging to shut down the virus and cure cancer.
Biden’s alleged deep reserves of empathy have never helped him resist the temptation of demagoguery – “gonna put y’all back in chains,” “Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”
So Joe Biden isn’t such an empathetic guy after all. Hey, at least he’s got his intellect, wisdom, rhetorical skills and keen judgment to fall back on.