Biden’s Foot-in-the-Mouth Disease

By Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Friday, 23 October 2020 

(https://www.newsmax.com/marekjanchodakiewicz/poland-hungary-belarus-minorities/2020/10/23/id/993435/)

Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s adventures and misadventures with the truth verge from comic to vicious. Recently, he slanderously compared Poland and Hungary to Belarus and other “totalitarianisms.” In a separate case he flippantly contrasted “the ‘really smart’ people” with Americans of Polish, Greek, and African descent.

Both cases upset the Polish and Hungarian diaspora in the U.S. to reverberate through the Intermarium, Poland and Hungary in particular. Next, the scandals boomeranged back to these teeming shores through the internet’s ethnic echo chamber. This is quite a ruckus, playing out almost entirely outside of mainstream corporate media. It is worth exploring, if only to show how the interconnectedness of our global world influences America’s presidential elections.

Joe Biden’s track record with the truth goes far beyond the standard Washington, D.C., test: “How can you tell that a politician is lying?” “His lips are moving.” Let’s be fair, however, and delve into loose lips Joe’s modus operandi. It is predicated on a perpetual self-aggrandizement drive and a Pavlovian reflex to be au courant with whatever sexy spirit of the times spews from corporate media.

Beyond any doubt in his 50-plus years in politics Joe Biden has kept some unsavory company. That included assorted bigots and racists, including KKK members whose funerals the Democratic politician attended, eulogizing them, well into the 21st century. Somehow his supporters and corporate media overlook this.

This is important and relevant in the context of the controversy of contrasting “the ‘really smart’ people,” in this particular instance the editorial board of the New York Times, with three of our national minority groups: African Americans, Greek Americans, and Polish Americans. Upon investigation, we must conclude that in this instance Biden was not racist, but simply awkward. He wanted to admonish his fellow Democrats for neglecting the blue collar grass roots.

Still, it came across as condescending to others to exclude these minorities from the ranks of “the ‘really smart’ people.” Biden must have not remembered late Bill Buckley Jr.’s quip that the later would rather be ruled by the first 500 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. Buckley meant that the common folk, including Americans of African, Greek, and Polish descent. have much more common sense and true grit necessary for wielding power than most egg heads, including the editors of The New York Times – especially them!

On the other hand, as far as Poland and Hungary, Biden’s foray into foreign policy and comparative totalitarianism was simply ignorant and vicious. He said: “You see what is happening from Belarus through Poland and Hungary and the rise of totalitarian regimes in the world. Our current president supports all thugs in the world.” Biden’s statement reflects precisely the sentiment mendaciously purveyed by corporate media and Big Tech. Accusations of “fascism” against Warsaw and Budapest are the norm.

Lucja Swiatkowski Cannon, who co-chairs Polish Americans for Trump, will have none of this. “Poland and Hungary are countries that are members of NATO and the European Union that have fully functioning democracies. Byelorussia is a dictatorship, largely under the control of Russia. Poland was the leader in the fight for freedom from communism with its revolutionary trade union Solidarity and it is a leader now in the Western assistance for the Byelorussian workers who want to make their own country Byelorussia more like Poland, a country of freedom and democracy.”

Debunking an identical contemporaneous smear David P. Goldman — aka “Spengler” —insists that: “Half a century of Nazi and Communist occupation nearly crushed the spirit of the nations of Eastern Europe; a decade ago they approached the point of no return for demographic extinction. The new nationalists who now govern Hungary and Poland…have rebuilt vibrant economies, raised birth rates, and established viable democracies out of nearly-ruined Soviet colonies. Despite their missteps — which are frequent and sometimes grave — they have restored hope for the future to lands which not long ago seemed like a cemetery of the human spirit.”

Poland and Hungary represent “nationalism that embraces Western civilization, religion, and family as the foundation of national life. They look to the United States for leadership and, in many cases, to Israel for inspiration. For all their failings, they offer a hope for national revival.” And then Goldman adds: “To claim that the unelected bureaucrats of Brussels are champions of democracy against the elected governments of “illiberal” Poland or Hungary is chutzpah.”

One would like to send Joe Biden back to college, but one is afraid he would emerge even more woke and ignorant than he already is. Further, one wonders whether all this will amount to Biden’s Gerald Ford moment. Running for President in 1976, Ford gleefully blurted out that Poland – a nation under Soviet occupation since 1944 – was “a free country.” He lost the Polish-American vote; he lost the election. As we see, foot-in-the-mouth disease is a bi-partisan affliction. And it may have dire consequences in November.

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz is Professor of History at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school of statecraft in Washington D.C.; expert on East-Central Europe’s Three Seas region; author, among others, of “Intermarium: The Land Between The Baltic and Black Seas.” Read Marek Jan Chodakiewicz’s Reports — More Here.