South Carolina senator Tim Scott, a possible contender for the VP slot next to Donald Trump, said after Trump's guilty verdict: "Joe Biden—you're fired."
This made me think about how expats working in Korean institutions are normally fired: they get to run out their current contracts, then the contracts aren't renewed.* By the same token, to "fire" Biden is simply to let him run out his full term. As far as I know, there's no "vote of no confidence" to oust a politician early as in other political systems. Sure, if a politician is caught in a serious enough scandal or is suddenly ill or the victim of an accident, an early end to his or her term is possible. Otherwise, though, a "firing" merely amounts to a non-renewal.
And that's too bad. In a just world, Biden would've been out on his ass three years ago. But in our system, it's like what HL Mencken said about democracy: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." Good and hard is right: four long years of good and hard from an old, senile idiot who stubbornly refuses to die because he's half embalming fluid already. (Then again, Mencken-on-democracy might not apply if Biden was cheated into the Oval Office in defiance of the will of the people.)
Meanwhile, leftist journalist Brian Tyler Cohen thought he had a gotcha moment when he wrote, "Reminder that Republicans say that felons shouldn't be allowed to vote. Now they want one to be president." I saw the Cohen meme on Instapundit and reacted with, "Who's asking Trump to vote?"
__________
*One major exception happened a few years back when we had a sexual-harassment case that our institute was quick to dispense with. The guilty party was summarily fired and not allowed to finish out his contract. Maybe this was justice, but just as likely, it was an image/reputation thing. This is East Asia, after all: things like "face" matter here—even more so in the #MeToo and #BelieveAllWomen era.
No comments:
Post a Comment
READ THIS BEFORE COMMENTING!
All comments are subject to approval before they are published, so they will not appear immediately. Comments should be civil, relevant, and substantive. Anonymous comments are not allowed and will be unceremoniously deleted. For more on my comments policy, please see this entry on my other blog.
AND A NEW RULE (per this post): comments critical of Trump's lying must include criticism of Biden's lying on a one-for-one basis! Failure to be balanced means your comment will not be published.