Embrace the Suck
Apparently the Biden administration is betting that the American people will indeed embrace it:
President Joe Biden is brushing off criticism of his administration’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal because he and his aides believe the political fallout at home will be limited, according to White House allies and administration officials.
Biden and his top aides argue they are managing an evacuation mission as well as could be expected given the faster-than-anticipated takeover of the country by Taliban insurgents, and are seeking to draw attention back to the choice to get U.S. troops out of the country.
The strategy is based on internal and public polling that shows the Afghanistan withdrawal had been by far the most popular decision Biden has made, even though the issue was not central for most voters.
The condescension here is palpable: Howdy Doody Biden and his various Charlie McCarthys believe that you are too stupid to be able to distinguish between a reasonable decision to exit and a catastrophically bundled way of doing it, or too apathetic to care.
This is so Soviet. Pretty much the same PR strategy the Soviets employed during Chernobyl and other assorted disasters: lie, deny, suppress, and depend on an apathetic populace to acquiesce meekly to the barrage of lies.
Speaking of the Soviets, during a “press conference” today, Biden did a great late-70s Brezhnev impersonation. He needs to put on some weight to give the full effect, but in terms of senescent befuddlement and denial of reality, he’s got it down pat. Among his most pathetic denials: no American is having problems getting to HKIA. Apparently their Uber apps are working great! He also blew off reports that diplomats on the ground had sent warnings about an impending disaster. His reply: Hey, I get cables all the time. I went with the consensus view. The consensus isn’t always wrong, but it usually is, especially in bureaucracies built on groupthink and ass kissing.
We can also expect to see a ramping up of Soviet-like distraction operations. Most notably: look for a barrage of COVID hysteria–directed at Republican governors in particular–and a focus on various domestic issues, notably voting legislation and massive stimulus bills (aka turning the US into an economic Afghanistan, except that we won’t grow our own opium.)
It’s not enough that they give us a redux of Weimar and the Cultural Revolution.
They put icing on the cake by giving us the Brezhnev years as well.
The Nixon-style currency crisis I foresee happening is going to do nicely as the cherry on top.
Comment by Ex-Global Super-Regulator on Lunch Break — August 21, 2021 @ 6:13 am
This might work for a week, or even a couple of months.
But there are an unknown number of US citizens in the ‘stan. That gives the Taliban tremendous leverage. It will be the Tehran embassy on a multiplier. Send back Ghani, send money, or else.
It can get worse. In the UK 100,000 + people go missing each year. No attempt to find them is made if they are adults with a clean sheet. For the US the cumulative total could easily be a million. All a Taliban sympathiser in the US has to do is scour some reports and voilà there are an unlimited number of invented hostages.
Biden owns this now. He is going to have to do a deal. The terms will be utterly humiliating.
Comment by philip — August 21, 2021 @ 7:25 am
‘Gen. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff … “There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in eleven days.”‘
General M speaks like a shyster: so he was warned that they might collapse in twelve days, presumably.
Comment by dearieme — August 21, 2021 @ 7:53 am
Dearieme:
Bingo.
VPVP Vlad
Comment by Vlad — August 22, 2021 @ 8:04 am
Toni Blair has described Biden’s decisions as “imbecilic”, which is a bit rich coming from that slimeball.
An opinionator in this morning’s Telegraph writes “The Afghan War ended in unmitigated defeat, the withdrawal was a humiliation, and the evacuation a disgrace.”
The defeat was not Biden’s, but the withdrawal and evacuation are entirely his – insofar as there is a “him” there any more.
Comment by dearieme — August 23, 2021 @ 2:49 am
It looks like they’ve decided to throw Buyden to the wolves, on the same scenario like with Cuomo. At the moment they’re frantically trying to find a lesser crime for him to leave on his own volition.
Comment by Tatyana — August 23, 2021 @ 4:48 am
@philip: Top wibbling that. Do you honestly think the Taliban have the inclination or wit to invent US hostages? I cannot believe there would be any US citizens in Afghanistan without the knowledge of their family, friends, employers etc, and if on the remote off-chance there were and they hadn’t already made themselves known to the US military or whoever, then they really don’t merit consideration or concern. Its that Darwin Award thingy again.
@deari: Is that the same Blair who took us into this war and stuck with it for like 9 years?
@Tatyana: A you ready for President Harris? She’ll be great.
Comment by David Mercer — August 23, 2021 @ 5:02 am
From the Telegraph, a chuckle-prompter:
“It was they [the old establishment] who committed America to building a foreign democracy in the midst of a civil war – a tall order for a nation that can’t even free Britney Spears.”
Comment by dearieme — August 23, 2021 @ 5:07 am
Yes, it is very Soviet – or, rather, it is the way of all authoritarian socialists, everywhere. Only at Chernobyl Soviet populace have been tamed and trained to be apathetic for 70 years. However, by that time the underground resistance had time to grow. Knowing there is not a semblance of truth is forthcoming from official channels, we’ve been listening to the “voices abroad” – from Finland, Sweden, Poland, etc.
Here, now…don’t know. So many factors +/-.
Kamala will dissolve quicker than Joe. She doesn’t have support even in her own party – judging by her failed presidential campaign.
Comment by Tatyana — August 23, 2021 @ 6:16 am
Well, Joe did fail at two campaigns, 1988 and 2008 versus one for the Kamel. The MSM is revealing they, like most of Democrat insiders, never thought of Joe the Windbag. Prominent Dems are leaving the sinking Biden raft. Senile, Ignorant and Arrogant is no way to end a political career, Joe, but the last two worked for ya these many years.
Comment by The Pilot — August 23, 2021 @ 4:06 pm
Come on man, Joe Biden is not in charge of his bowels let alone the US.
Comment by Joel Walker — August 24, 2021 @ 2:58 pm
Hilariously, in April, Biden said gun owners were going to nukes to take on the Federal, discounting the Second Amendment. Well, he just surrendered to a rag-tag, illiterate army of goatherders and opium growers with cast-off AK-47s. Who says we don’t do irony?
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-57590483
Comment by The Pilot — August 24, 2021 @ 7:41 pm
They are no longer limited to second-hand kalashnikovs.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/update-bidens-gift-taliban-included-110-helicopters-20-light-attack-airplanes-42000-light-attack-vehicles-25000-grenade-watchers/
Comment by Tatyana — August 25, 2021 @ 10:55 am
Oh dear, the capitulation in Kabul has been followed by carnage in Kabul. I may lack imagination but I don’t see how all this can be blamed on Trump.
Is anyone offering odds on who the next VP will be? Could Obama be appointed? If Harris then resigned would constitutional term limits disbar Obama from serving as Prez again?
Comment by dearieme — August 26, 2021 @ 3:15 pm
@13 dearieme, Obama was a disaster as president. There’s no reason to think he’d be an improvement now.
Among the Democrat lot, Tulsi Gabbard is the only tough-minded and competent candidate. And will not be chosen for that reason.
Comment by Pat Frank — August 26, 2021 @ 6:18 pm
Good Lord, Pat, I’m not suggesting that O would be an improvement, just speculating on whom Harris might appoint as VP if The Husk were wheeled off for medical reasons. Not Hillary, obvs, because that would be Harris signing her own death warrant. Not Gabbard because, as you say, she would be by miles the best available Dem. Not, how frustrating for him, Cuomo. How about that dud in California? He might have some time on his hands soon.
Graveyard humour, I’ll grant you. But graveyard thoughts abound when you have a Prez who has always been ignorant, arrogant, and a bit dim, but now has added senility to his repertoire.
Bugger me, The West is in a bad way.
Comment by dearieme — August 27, 2021 @ 9:37 am
*dearie, at times like this, it’s best to keep one’s fingers crossed and just listen.
do not talk, do not jinx – just wait and listen
Comment by Tatyana — August 27, 2021 @ 10:19 am
Another chortler from an opinionator in the Telegraph:
‘Biden remembered to say that America “would not forgive” the massacre of its troops. Which must have had the Taliban and others quaking. He then vowed to “hunt down” the people responsible. Though of course hunting down successful suicide bombers is not as easy as it sounds.’
Comment by dearieme — August 27, 2021 @ 3:04 pm
You need to start with the unsuccessful suicide bombers and work backwards. A bit like kamikaze pilots, look for the unsuccessful pilots, they might be the key to future kamikaze pilots.
Comment by The Pilot — August 27, 2021 @ 4:42 pm
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/sleepy-joe-just-fell-asleep-on-live-television/
Comment by dearieme — August 29, 2021 @ 8:33 am
Homage To A Government
by Philip Larkin
Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.
It’s hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it’s been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.
Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it’s a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money
Comment by Josephine — August 29, 2021 @ 3:51 pm
I would rather not embrace this.
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1012388/taliban-hanging-victim-from-american-black-hawk
Comment by Sotosy1 — August 30, 2021 @ 4:31 pm
Funny how Biden always brings up Beau, but never mentions the crack head son.
Comment by Joe Walker — September 1, 2021 @ 3:35 pm
@ Joe Walker…Beau was a political appointee lawyer to the military (one guess how he qualified for that job), and he prosecuted soldiers for alleged crimes on the battlefield.
He died of cancer in Delaware, not on the battlefield.
There is no nobility in any Biden.
Comment by Richard Whitney — September 1, 2021 @ 7:38 pm
Moshe was a Jew back in 1930s germany.
There were warnings about things to come.
The nazis, socialists through and through, were not hiding anything.
But Moshe thought “germany is one of the most civilized nations on Earth”
Moshe was a veteran of WW1 and had fought and fought well for germany like many other germans.
Moshe was doing well and considered himself a german in good standing.
Moshe thought “what’s the worse than can happen?”
By the time the unpleasantness had finished in 1945 Moshe had been turned into smoke after a brief passage through a german gas chamber holding a rock.
Moshe made a mistake.
He should have left while the leaving was good.
The normalcy bias was involved.
American patriots have all the warnings you can have.
The current winds are the same winds of the 1930s germany.
American patriots think “this is one of the most civilized nations on Earth”
American patriots think “what’s the worse that can happen?”
But we are making a mistake.
We are the Jews of Venezuerica’s gleichschaltung.
I’m not saying we should leave because were do you go if Venezuerica becomes unviable?
What I’m saying is that the normalcy bias is giving us the wrong answers.
And that this is not business as usual.
It has been said “if the Jews of germany in the 1930s had each had a Mouser and 20 rounds of ammunition . . .”
I’m not that sure that’s accurate of the Jews of the 1930s germany.
You see, the problem is what’s lacking in that phrase: “and the will to use them”
Now, we, we are armed to the teeth.
The 2nd Amendment as educated people know is not there for hunting or sport of whatever BS any uneducated individuals might mention but precisely for situations like the one we are living.
We each HAVE considerably more than just a Mouser (nothing wrong with Mousers) and considerably more than 20 rounds.
My problem is exactly the same I see on that notion about the Jews of germany.
“And the will to use them”
Now, I have heard many an American patriot go, comparing himself with the Jews of 1930s germany “they would have NEVER taken me to the trains!!!”
And here’s my problem: they are taking you to the trains right now.
THIS . . . is how it happens.
EXACTLY LIKE THIS.
Look around you.
This is how it looks.
If you want to know what you would have done as a Jew in the 1930s germany go look in the mirror and you will.
Comment by Trains? - Who said ‘trains’? — September 3, 2021 @ 5:51 pm
@Richard/@Joe. Beau was in the military (in a REMF JAG slot that posed trivial personal risk) while he was AG of Delaware merely to burnish his resume for future political advancement. Advancement that cancer snatched from him–much to his father’s evident chagrin.
Note that Joe secured a similar slot for the crackhead, but alas, Hunter couldn’t keep his mouth off the pipe, failed a drug test, and was drummed out of the Navy, thereby ruining dad’s rehabilitation project.
It is sickly amusing that Joe recently mixed up Beau’s service branch–saying he was in the Navy before correcting himself to say Army. Hunter was in the Navy (albeit briefly). I consider that mixup to be a Freudian slip.
Comment by cpirrong — September 4, 2021 @ 7:00 pm