Sometimes I find myself wondering which is likely more accurate: that President Joe Biden has no idea what he’s doing, or that President Joe Biden is striving to destroy the economy and much of what made America the greatest nation in history in the first place. It’s a tough call, it really is. The only conclusion I can draw is that he – Joseph Robinette Biden, the 46th President of the United States – has a fundamental lack of understanding of our country. From that starting point, everything kind of makes sense.
One of the President’s favorite lines on the campaign trail, or in any speech, really, goes something like this: That’s not who we are as a nation.
The topic doesn’t matter, the point is always the same – build up a strawman, burn him down by declaring the popular will of the country is on his side, whether it is or not. Abortion, race, taxes, spending, the issue doesn’t matter, the polling data doesn’t matter, if it is in opposition to what the President wants, it’s “not who we are.”
But I’m not sure a man who has not worked in the private sector since he was a teenager ready to throw down with Corn Pop has any real understanding of what the United States is as a country. We are the culmination of our life experiences, and you can’t really experience life by proxy. Being an elected official your whole life is not reality, it perverts your reality.
Having a perverted reality has never stopped any politician from speaking out as though they are an expert about subject on which they know nothing. How many times can Bernie Sanders introduce insane bills that would destroy businesses – like his 32 hour work week at the same pay bill – before people recognize his most successful foray into the private sector saw him kicked out of a commune for laziness?
President Biden believes “the rich need to pay their fair share of taxes” while ignoring the fact that his son did not pay millions of dollars in taxes on many more millions of dollars in income, and he seems perfectly fine with that. His government is seeking to force Americans to buy electric vehicles they don’t want and can’t afford, to run on a power grid that can’t support all the chargers that don’t exist.
I’d say you can’t make this stuff up, but you can – the imagination is an amazing thing – only no one would believe you.
A fundamental misunderstanding of how markets work and how businesses work will lead to Solyndra – the solar company the Obama/Biden administration blessed with $535 million in federal loan guarantees before they went belly up – or, more recently, Proterra, the electric bus company the Biden administration favored before its collapse. Imagine a world where we look with relief at the collapse of Proterra because it only cost us $10 million? But that’s what you get with political leadership, no matter their age, that has never worked in the private sector.
Now, the President has come out against the purchase of US Steel by Nippon Steel because Nippon is a Japanese company. I’m no Andrew Carnegie, but I do know the offer from Nippon was about twice any other offer, which means they’re doing better in the steel industry than other suitors. That, I would think, would be what you’d want in a company buying your “teetering on the edge” employer because it likely means a more stable future.
But the Steelworkers Union opposes the deal because Nippon is Japanese. Suddenly the steel industry is the auto industry in the 80s movie “Gung Ho.”
With Joe Biden running point on the opposition, and the Steelworkers Union pulling the strings, they’re going to “principle” themselves right into the unemployment line.
Biden also likes to position himself as the “experienced diplomat” compared to other politicians but telling one of our closest allies that they can’t make a significant investment in the U.S. because it might buy him a couple more votes in a swing state doesn’t sound very diplomatic to me.
I’ve never seen a union come out against securing jobs long term, nor have I known a President to endorse the concept of an ally nation keeping a major employer in a swing state in business as a bad thing. This election is shaping up to be a weird one.
The US Steel situation is just the latest example of the Biden administration doing things that leave you scratching your head. The only rational explanation is that, no matter how many times he reads line about who we are as a country off a teleprompter, the President of the United States does not understand the concept of America. Either that or he doesn’t care. Neither option is particularly good.