Hold the phone, Batman! Someone found Colombian marching powder in the White House this weekend.
Several reports have noted that a white powder that tested positive as cocaine was discovered two days after Hunter Biden visited the White House. With the use of Post hoc ergo propter hoc before you could snort that line, the president's son was blamed for it. (Well, in certain quarters.) Just because one thing followed the other doesn't mean the first thing caused the second, folks. Yet it's politically expedient these days to knock people when they're down and engage in logical fallacies in order to con large portions of the public into believing outrageous fictions.
That brings us the Supreme Court, which ruled last week that a web designer didn't have to create a wedding site for a member of the LGBTQ community if doing so violated the designer's beliefs. Only, as reported and confirmed, the case involved was pure fiction. The person who supposedly requested a website for a same-sex wedding is a straight man married to a woman, and is himself a web designer. But the decision rendered by the Supreme Court opens the door to refusing service to people based upon a myriad of reasons, perhaps including race and color.
See where this is going? Jim Crow, here we come.
Meanwhile, back to drugs (because at this point we may need them): Many who oppose Joe Biden have used the cocaine issue as evidence that his administration is corrupt and out to lunch — or worse. One MAGA supporter I've known for more than 40 years told me that Biden is "a corrupt drug lord ruining the country and taking us away from God." I asked him where he himself figured into that narrative, since this guy was arrested for selling pot in a public park as a teenager. I got no answer to that.
This whole issue is much ado about nothing. First Lady Betty Ford admitted during her husband's presidency that her sons got high, probably at the White House. Indeed, there is a long history of drug use in that storied building. As the comedian Bill Hicks once said, not only should marijuana be legal, it should be mandatory in certain contexts. That would definitely help with press briefings and news conferences. For the record, I've never seen rapid eye movements or anyone grinding their teeth or sniffing frequently — the telltale signs of cocaine use — from anyone in the Biden White House.
For all we know, the cocaine found there could be left over from Hunter S. Thompson's visit years ago, not Hunter Biden's of two days ago. If we find LSD as well, we'll know for sure that Thompson has struck from beyond the grave. But he wasn't the only person who has famously used drugs at the White House. Willie Nelson claimed he rolled and smoked a joint on the White House roof during the Carter administration.
I knew people in the George W. Bush administration who routinely boozed, smoked and snorted their way through the work day. With the pressures they faced sometimes, who could blame them?
Having covered both Republican and Democratic conventions, I can report with confidence that "both sides" do it — meaning low-level vice, recreational drugs and an array of associated visceral thrills.
During one of the last parties of Bill Clinton's administration — a wondrous affair held in tents on the South Lawn — Tom Petty and his band walked through the West Wing reeking of weed, giggling so hard that it made me jealous I wasn't part of the merriment. I also witnessed a very famous actor at that party snorting white powder in one of the portable bathrooms on the South Lawn. Let's just say it wasn't anthrax or fentanyl.
I knew a staffer during the Reagan administration who took so much speed his armpit stains were green. He claimed he had a prescription for the stuff, but I'm pretty sure the doctor didn't intend for him to take a month's worth in a week. For the record, I definitely saw that guy grind his jaws, blink rapidly and sniff frequently.
Laugh at this whole issue if you want; scream and rant and rave if you must — but you risk being the biggest hypocrite on the planet if you do. Truth is, politics and government are filled with those who find energy, courage, inspiration and the occasional escape through a wide variety of psychoactive drugs, including alcohol and even nicotine. Once, while I was covering the Iowa caucuses, I saw a Secret Service agent keep the bar open in the Drake Hotel by fetching a case of bourbon from the trunk of his bar after the bartender insisted he had to close.
Having covered both Republican and Democratic conventions, I can report with certainty that "both sides" do it — that is, they dabble in low-level vice, recreational drugs and associated visceral thrills while on the road. You haven't lived until you've seen a politician who claims he supports "family values" burying his face in the chest of a cheap hooker while blind drunk and coked-up. Yes. That happened.
Sometimes the extracurricular activity is so egregious it makes national news by itself. The implosion of Gary Hart's political career in 1984 comes to mind.
Is any of this a cause for real concern? Yes and no. Yes, if it compromises a politician's ability to do their job, and no, if it has nothing to do with their job and is merely their attempt at the pursuit of happiness, as outlined in the Declaration of Independence. But again, In the case of the supposed stash of maybe-cocaine found at the White House, we have no idea who left the stuff near where "guests are asked to leave their cell phones before proceeding into the West Wing," as CNN and AP have described it.
I mean, who leaves their stash behind and forgets about it? That's the first question any self-respecting drug user will ask. Well, that or "Why didn't you snort it up before you got to the White House?" The only real concern is if someone managed to sneak anthrax, or some other toxic substance, into the White House. Otherwise, this so-called story is just a diversion from the real news this week.
We celebrated our Declaration of Independence from Britain this week — or at least we tried to do that, through a number of mass shootings at various venues across the country. It was an exceedingly violent celebration. Shootings were reported in Lansing, Michigan; Akron, Ohio; Hayward, California; Washington D.C.; Edgewood, Maryland; and Shreveport, Louisiana. Ten died and 38 were wounded in mass shootings in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Fort Worth ahead of the holiday. Four died in the shooting in Shreveport. A 14-year-old was killed and six more people were injured in a shooting in Salisbury, Maryland, just after midnight. All of that barely made a dent in the news because mass shootings are a daily occurrence in this country — and because Donald Trump and the GOP were too busy trying to blame the Bidens for "CocaineGate."
Meanwhile, celebrating Independence Day with fireworks has itself become a fraught issue. Dogs, notoriously, hate them. So do many people. I myself have mixed feelings. My dad loved them, and watching a fireworks display always reminds him. But the explosions and flashes also remind me of conflict zones I've visited. I guarantee you I wouldn't be cheering if I were in certain parts of Africa today, or in the Middle East or Ukraine, and I heard those constant deep concussive booms or saw fireworks. I'd be running for cover.
In this country, however, we're supposed to find that festive.
Finally, there is this: On Independence Day, it has become popular to deride the founders of our nation. After all, they were all rich white men, and most were slave owners. So pretending that they were patriots for the cause of equality, the argument goes, is just more American hypocrisy.
There's a flaw to that reasoning. Those who refuse to celebrate the roots of our independence, or who call the founders corrupt, are missing the point. Indeed they were flawed individuals. We all are. But it's unfair to compare them to ourselves because of the differences of history and culture, and doing so reflects a key misunderstanding of what they accomplished. They were progressive thinkers for their time.
Calling our nation's founders a bunch of corrupt rich white men is missing the point. They were flawed individuals, but they had a crucial insight into how to build a better mousetrap.
It is not that the founders thought themselves perfect, or that their revolution made them sacred. But they did have a crucial insight into how to build a better mousetrap. Their revolution was a template of ideals, not a list of achievements. No nation on earth had previously existed where the common man was held to be equal to those who ran government — and no one has ever said that better than in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. ..."
Life: We all have the right to live. Liberty: We all have the right to be free. And the pursuit of happiness? If you aren't taking someone else's life, freedom or happiness away, then you're free to do what you will.
It was Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston and Roger Sherman, as the "Committee of Five," who wrote that. It is the very essence of what our government is meant to be and what dictates our actions in the three branches of government, including the Supreme Court. Not only have modern-day politicians forgotten these ideals, it's likely they never believed in them.
Professing to be the only person who can lead us to salvation is diametrically opposed to the principles of our nation. Pretending to be a patriot while also claiming to be a savior is a betrayal of the very cause such a politician claims to represent.
Holding any politician up as a savior defeats the purpose of a government that is meant to be of, by and for the people. Politicians work for us — they do not lead us, as a king would. We are not supposed to be ruled by their whims, desires or needs — they are supposed to be responsive to ours.
At its core, our government is about equal opportunity for everyone. It is also about equal accountability by everyone. Dismissing our founders for not living up to their ideals is one thing, but dismissing those ideals entirely is another.
Taken in that light, the recent decisions by the Supreme Court are traitorous. As former federal prosecutor Michael Zeldin said on CNN and later on the podcast "Just Ask the Question," the Supreme Court as it now exists "is the most activist court in history. The Republicans claimed they want strict interpretation of the Constitution, but they're fine with the court actively legislating what they want."
There are many politicians who will try anything to make sure you never notice that. Cocaine in the White House? That is just another effort to fuel pointless anger and keep Americans from concentrating on the real issues.
Snort that up.
