That a ruler or priest can be both a hypocrite and moralizer has been true throughout human history.
Thus has Joe Biden embraced his inner Chaucerian Pardoner in issuing his son Hunter a full pardon for any crime he may or may not have committed in the past decade. No matter that Hunter was never charged in direct co connection with his work for a gas company in Ukraine. where his then-vice president daddy was de facto viceroy, ordering that poor country to raise its retirement age, discontinue energy subsidies for its citizens, and otherwise impose austerity measures while Hunter raked in millions.
Some liberals are upset mainly because Hunter got a pass on his federal gun possession conviction, a pass which may put a dent in future gun control legislation. These are the same liberals, mind you, who have no qualms sending arms to Israel for its ongoing genocide.
And as for the Republicans, their own hypocrisy in going after the Bidens is demonstrated on a daily basis by shielding the rank criminality of not a few of Donald Trump's capitalist cronies and even Donald Trump himself.
As far as elite malefactors are concerned, it is hard not to notice that the prosecutors and the pardoners end up just canceling each other out. After a lot of moralizing and manufactured outrage theater, of course.
So when Trump vows that hewill pardon a whole ton of people in revenge for Hunter, it will not be the tens or even hundreds of thousands of mainly black men who Biden has helped imprison for minor drug offenses by virtue of his racist 1990s crime bill.
The hypocrisy continues as Biden made an official trip to Angola in West Africa, ostensibly to pledge the building of a rail route from the interior for the easy transport of precious minterals that US firms need for electronics and, of course, weaponry. While there, Biden will ostentatiously tour the country's slavery museum. This feeble, hypocritical gesture is a poor substitute for any actual monetary reparations for the descendants of African slaves, who for generations since the Civil War have suffered disproportionately as a direct result of slavery and Jim Crow... and Biden's crime legislation.
So while Joe Biden's pardon of his son might be nauseating, it should not be surprising. By pardoning his son, he was also shielding himself from any future chargesrelating to influence-peddling or even worse.
If, by any chance that he is also accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, there's already a US law on the books that will send in the military to rescue any US official held in The Hague for war crimes.
As Chaucer's Pardoner protested back in that 14th century chronicle: "What? Think you that because I'm good at preaching/And win me gold and silver by my teaching/I'll live of my own free will in poverty?/No, no that's never been my policy!"
