Firehose #146: Memorialize THIS!

Also: It wasn’t hard to notice that Joe Biden was too old

Happy Memorial Day, from our family to yours! Pictured above is the Arlington National Cemetery gravestone of my great-great-grandpappy, Hugo Wilson Osterhaus, whose German immigrant father, Peter Joseph Osterhaus, was a major general for the good guys in the U.S. Civil War. You can read about him in the 2010 University of Missouri-published biography, Yankee Warhorse, written by MY MOM. Here she is talking about it:

I trust that you all will be celebrating the holiday the traditional way, i.e. grilling baseball steaks, watching playoff games of your preferred winter sport, and throwing darts at pictures of communists. Share pics in the Chat!

* Before we get started on the buckets and buckets of topical commentary from the Fifiverse, here’s Arch Stanton’s best work yet:

* It has been quite the week for discussion about Joe Biden’s health, belated media curiosity thereof, and the out-this-week Jake Tapper/Alex Thompson joint Original Sin (which we talked about at the tail end of Episode #506 & on this week’s monthly Zoom call with paying subscribers). Synthesizing for Politico the revelations from that and two other books, old pal Jamie Kirchick (veteran of #55, #347 & #394) says they “paint a devastating portrait of an ailing, geriatric leader surrounded by mendacious aides and grasping family members.” More:

In December 2019, while Biden was vying for his party’s presidential nomination and four months before he vaguely promised to be a “bridge” to a new “generation of leaders,” four Biden advisers told POLITICO that it was virtually inconceivable he would run for reelection in 2024. Biden’s decline was apparent to his inner circle before the 2020 Democratic Convention, in which, given the pandemic, his participation would consist mostly of pre-taped videos. Even this undemanding medium proved onerous for the then 77-year-old, whose performance speaking virtually with real Americans was, according to two aides, “horrible” as Biden “couldn’t follow the conversation at all.” Despite being edited by some of the best people in the business, little of the material was usable.

The morbid observation by some Biden aides that the pandemic, while terrible for the world, was an enormous boon for their campaign, was entirely accurate. With Biden granted a plausible excuse to avoid active campaigning, the American people were shielded from the physical and mental regression that would become increasingly apparent as the country opened up. And once he entered the White House, it was visible to anyone who saw him up close. “The cabinet meetings were terrible and at times uncomfortable — and they were from the beginning,” a cabinet secretary told Tapper and Thompson, one of four to speak anonymously with the authors. In October 2021, when Biden addressed the Democratic House caucus in an effort to win their support for an infrastructure package, one member described his 30-minute speech as “incomprehensible.” According to Allen and Parnes, Vice President Kamala Harris’ communications director eventually drew up a spreadsheet listing judges across the country who could administer her the oath of office in the event Biden died.

According to all three accounts, 2023 was the year Biden’s deterioration became undeniable. It was also the year he formally announced his decision to seek reelection

* On Tangle’s Sunday podcast, new Editor at Large Kmele joined for an episode titled (in part), “We Were Right About Biden.”

* Original Sin also came up Monday on this week’s Reason Roundtable, starting at around the 46-minute mark:

* Staying on the theme was Tuesday’s episode of The Moynihan Report, featuring non-blonde Olivia Reingold (#459):

* As referenced on #506, Tapper and Thompson (the latter of whom came on Members Only #215 and #468) got cross-examined this week on The Megyn Kelly Show. Here’s a clip:

* On WBAL’s The C4 Show Thursday, I tried to make the point that it didn’t take some kind of courageous super-genius to notice out loud that Biden had deteriorated visibly in office, and that the more relevant questions were about who, precisely, suppressed information about his condition, and why so many in the media class enabled the lie. (Start at 31:48 here, or take this shorter Busty Wimsatt clip.)

C4, who is a Baltimore institution and all-around mensch, started the segment with a reading from my March 2024 Reason piece, “The State of Our Biden Is Historically Frail.” Were there other such pieces of commentary? A few, yes.

We did a Reason Roundtable podcast in February 2024 under the headline “Biden’s Cognitive Shrinkflation.” The month prior I observed that “the president's physical and verbal decline at a time of great international uncertainty has helped make him the incumbent Democrat most vulnerable to a primary challenge since Jimmy Carter in 1980.” There was “Even Democrats Think Biden Is Too Old” (November 2023); a September 2023 swipe at media critics for, “policing adjectives in news organizations’ tweets and headlines, and yelling ‘false equivalence!’ every time someone mentions that Biden's aging is a political problem,” plus a May 2023 conjecture that Democratic support for the president “is just one serious fall away from eroding into a frantic search for a replacement. If the party were to treat any visible degradation the same way it treated Sen. John Fetterman's (D–Pa.) stroke—nothing to see here, all is well—then the same Trump-fueled electability panic that finally made Biden a viable presidential candidate in 2019 after four decades of trying may come back to bite him. And if they were to replace him with Kamala Harris, then Katie, bar the door.”

Door done got barred. In January 2023, I called Biden “a leaky-brained liar of a president”; two months before that a “doddering old geezer,” and during the 2019 Democratic primary season, “a rusty weather vane who has lost several miles per hour off his fastball.” (I like my metaphors like my doubles: mixed.) Note that this search does not yet include archives of The Fifth Column, though that capability is currently being drastically enhanced by Top. Men.

* OK, let’s change gears. The Middle, with host Jeremy Hobson, bills itself as “the only live national call-in current events program on public radio,” airing “on more than 420 NPR stations nationwide each week as well as Sirius/XM, with a podcast distributed by iHeartMedia and available wherever you get your podcasts.” Thursday’s episode of The Middle was titled, “If Not DEI, Then What?” Guests were ACLU President Deborah Archer, and … Kmele!

* Keeping on the subject of race, Jesse Singal (#111, #171, #501) published a piece Monday titled, “Of Course Liberal Institutions Are Engaging In Illegal Hiring Practices On The Basis Of Race,” using Trump’s war on Harvard as the peg. Then a bunch of self-described “generally right-of-center lawyers, scholars, and former government officials” published a joint letter “to speak out against the Trump Administration's attempts to restrict the speech of Harvard and other universities,” hastening to add that, “We see plenty of problems with the academy, including those related to antisemitism.” Then the White House was all, kiss your furriners g-bye, then the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) was all AYFKM, then Steven Pinker tried to coin the phrase Harvard Derangement Syndrome, then a court told Trump to get stuffed.

Now come the Friday thinkpieces: “Trump’s Assault on Harvard Is an Astonishing Act of National Self-Sabotage,” by Yascha Mounk (#124, #195); “This is not about reforming higher education; it's about destroying it out of spite,” by Andrew Sullivan (#139, #200 & #449).

* Moar race: Remember birder/unleashed-dog-hater Christian Cooper, he of the fateful Central Park encounter with alleged “Karen” Amy Cooper? He was interviewed this week by Noam Dworman:

* Still more race? Why not. At the risk of ever talking about South Africa again, two links: The first, from me, 11 years ago: “The Third Lesson of Nelson Mandela.” The second, this week, from our pal Mike Pesca (#343, #418, #467):

Although Trump did not bring up the “white genocide” claims directly, a somewhat bewildered Ramaphosa addressed the issue, explaining that while some white South Africans have been murdered in “farm killings,” black citizens are being killed at much higher rates throughout the country. The most authoritative researcher I can find on farm killings is Nechama Brodie, who was mentioned in this article, but here’s what stands out:

* Less than 1% of South Africa's 27,000 murders a year are "farm killings." Other reliable stats say it’s about 50 white South Africans murdered on their farms each year.

* Of South Africa's 63 million residents, 2.7 million are Afrikaners and are murdered at 10x lower rates than other South Africans.

However, the denominator should not be Afrikaners in general, but white South African farm owners. These numbers aren't that hard to find, but are rarely included in discussions of the problem. According to the official South African government audit, there are 95,000 white land owners, so 50 murders out of 95,000 is slightly higher than the overall South African murder rate, which is already incredibly high, but it's not a genocide. It's also not NOT [a] phenomenon.

* The 2Way empire keeps expanding. The latest addition, just in time for the NBA conference finals, is our good friend Ethan Strauss (#185, #333, #383, M.). #151, & #408), with a program called Random Offense. The first episode airs … today! Like right now! Ethan, who has been on fire lately about all things Caitlin Clark, went this week on the Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em podcast, where the ladies have, unlike certain other podcasts we could name, recently pivoted to video:

* Moynihan had a second Report this week, this time with documentary filmmaker Nick August-Perna of Tell Them You Love Me fame:

* Comment of the Week comes from David:

Thanks for sharing this. South Africa is a complicated place that feels similar to the USA but is pretty unfamiliar in a lot of ways, which is why I think a lot more people would be interested in it if they had exposure to discussions like this.

That being said, in my experiences living here, South Africans, especially white ones of a certain age, tend to exaggerate the threat *they* face in day to life. Does this diminish the reality of crime people face? Certainly not. Still, it's an important distinction that is not without differences. The bulk of crime is experienced by non-white people inflicted by other non-white people (obviously not a good thing). Unless you've visited South Africa (sorry to be a Douglas Murray here) it's hard to articulate that contradiction.

I 100% agree with your rehashing of criticisms of the EFF too, because they're have anti-democratic, violent tendencies and proudly espouse their admiration for Lenin, Stalin and a host of failed African revolutionaries. Thankfully, *and this is very important*, South African society is not persuaded by radical talk like this and the data backs this up.

While gross and something I don't believe should be sung, the Kill The Boer song is understood to be a liberation song that factually didn't inspire masses of people to go out and kill white people during apartheid or in the years immediately following its toppling. Similar to the river to the sea? I'm not sure because the ANC never once premised it's fight against apartheid as the elimination of white people. Malema was found guilty of hate speech in 2011 for the song, but then found not guilty in 2022 for the song. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it isn’t the case that this song is broadly accepted and sung - it isn’t, and people have been debating its longevity after liberation for over a decade.

At the same time you're not wrong for pointing out that the situation in South Africa is far more fucked up than those pushing back against Trump want to admit or even know. And this is where you and I agree about the reaction to Trump: People hone in on his delivery of the content without stopping to consider that the content is still correct. Still: What he did was ridiculous and worthy of derision, especially because his premise was a racialised interpretation of a broader problem. That’s incorrect and deserves push back - humorous or otherwise.

There has been a shift in the conversation in South Africa too, which you point out. But I'm not so sure it's categorically negative as your *sources* suggest and would think that the vast majority of South Africans I know and interact with every day, would disagree (while at the same time absolutely agreeing that crime is one of, if not the, biggest issue facing the country.)

South Africa is so contextual and the experience of it unfortunately too determined by race and class, to take what someone says wholesale (and that goes for me too).

Walkoff music, among other things, is a perfect visual representation of the year 1986.