Roger Kimball

If you are paying attention, you know that nature is full of inklings and adumbrations. I am writing in New England in mid-September — and it was just about a week ago that a subtle change in the atmosphere proclaimed the advent of autumn. It was not just that the weather listed cooler; it was also that the entire sensory gestalt shifted. The world suddenly bristled with different smells and colors and sounds. Browns and yellows and reds were edging out summer greens in the leaves. The roads were carpeted with acorns. You knew that the world was confronting you with different prospects and expectations. Something similar happens in the world of politics. For a long time, a certain narrative reigns.

What’s worse than chaos? How about a power vacuum? All the beautiful people are bewailing the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House yesterday because it is supposedly “thrusting the House into chaos.”  Right on cue we have the New York Times skirling that “Far-Right GOP Faction Throws House Into Chaos.” Cant watchers: notice the deployment of the term “far-right” as an intensifier. Not only chaos but chaos from a source the Times can get away with castigating as far right. (Extra credit: would the Times describe a dramatic action by the Squad as “far left”? If not, why not?) On November 2, 1963, a CIA-instigated coup sparked the assassination of Vietnam president Ngô Đình Diệm. The trouble was, they had no one with whom to replace Diem.

Merrick Garland’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday was a spectacular, if depressing, confirmation of something any sentient observer had noticed long ago: that the Department of Justice, and its head, Attorney General Garland, are horribly, egregiously compromised.  The outcome or upshot? That Garland should be impeached and removed from office and the DOJ itself should be put into the political equivalent of Chapter 11 so that its management can be replaced and its activities reorganized. As I say, this has long been obvious to any sentient observer. But Wednesday’s testimony put meat on the bones of this impending repudiation. Several Republicans put hard questions to the attorney general.

I have been meaning to weigh in on [cue scary music] Special Counsel David Weiss’s sham indictment of Hunter Biden on felony gun charges for a few days. I am glad I waited.  It’s not that I have changed my mind about the indictments, or company man Weiss. Everyone knows he is on the job as an interior decorator, whose primary task is to produce window dressing for the Department of Injustice so that its two-tier deployment of police power is not too obvious to the casual onlooker. Weiss has supposedly been investigating Hunter Biden for the last five years. Wouldn’t you know it, the statute of limitation on many of the tax charges is passing by like that herd of cows outside your train window even as I write.

What time is it? A bit like the emperor Domitian, Joe Biden seems confused about the time. Warned by an omen that his death would come at midday, Domitian daily pestered people around him with that question, relaxing only after the dreaded hour had passed.  Alas, his caution availed him not. One day in September 96 AD, a treacherous servant lied to Domitian about the time, inducing him to let down his guard. A knife-wielding steward did the rest.  I am not sure that President Biden is still possessed of a guard he can drop. But if his recent performance in Hanoi is any indication, he does seem to be confused about the time of day. ‘Good evening, everyone. It is evening, isn’t it? This around the world in five days is interesting.

Although I write at high summer, by the time you read this another school year will be upon us. I wonder: do students still read T.S. Eliot? They should. A lot of what he wrote continues to reverberate with significance. Consider, to take just one example, these lines from his poem “Gerontion.” History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities. Think now She gives when our attention is distractedAnd what she gives, gives with such supple confusionsThat the giving famishes the craving.Gives too lateWhat’s not believed in, or if still believed,In memory only, reconsidered passion.Gives too soonInto weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed withTill the refusal propagates a fear.

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of Peachy Keenan’s report that Hunter Biden, having caused such trouble for the Deep State, has been invited to go paddle-boarding at the Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard estate. That’s probably just one of those mean things that right-wing, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals like, well, like me would say. But literally true or not, it is, as Algernon Moncrieff observed in other context, perfectly phrased and “quite as true as any observation in civilized life should be” — especially, I might add, any observation that touches upon the Bidens. The chief thing to keep in mind as you savor the soap opera of Hunter Biden’s faux prosecution is that Hunter’s story is inseparable from the story of dear old dad, “the Big Guy,” Mr.

A famous clip from recent history: “I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.” That was Joe Biden in 2016. He was relaxing among friends at a chummy event at the Council on Foreign Relations. Ha, ha, ha, tittered the appreciative audience. What a lark! Here was a former vice president of the United States bragging about how he (naughty word) blackmailed an official from a foreign government who was investigating the company on whose board Joe Biden’s son sat. This is old news, of course.