The very recent Presidential pardoning of the Biden scion, Hunter, by his own father, Joseph Robinette BIDEN Jr., as he prepares to leave office as the 46th President of the United States of America, is one of those side-sneering, laughing-from-the-wrong-side-
of-the-mouth impulses, redolent of everything pathetically incredulous. A redux-deluxe vestige of old America’s colonial monsters, the British, initially instituted as a ‘prerogative-of-mercy’ from The Crown to its subjects, the Presidential Pardon is sweeping in its authority. Amusingly, clemency was also extended just a week before Biden’s pardon, on the eve of American Thanksgiving-Thursday, to a couple of birds-of-equal-feather; Turkeys considered blessed enough not to have to feel the heated ignominy of the baste. Repeatedly, when directly asked of any future possibilities of his granting his son, Hunter, any pardon for the conviction of Federal Tax Evasion and gun charges, Biden père was unequivocally affirmative in the negative. His choosing to boldly tergiversate on the matter by now granting a “full and unconditional pardon” dating all the way back to 2014, effectively covering any other possible offenses and the misdemeanor period of Hunter’s convictions, may be viewed as unfortunate. But as to perhaps being a blot on his legacy escutcheon, that metric seems utterly redundant. The outcome of the last American Presidential elections has put to bed any notion of righteous moralities, urbanities or acceptable airs. Who is who to tell another what to say or do? President Biden’s ratiocination for his action of pardon, is that he views his son’s conviction in 2023 as a gross “miscarriage of justice” brought about by political enemies out to exact revenge for what they perceived as a like treatment in the ‘hounding and prosecution’ of former President D. Trump. Ergo, concluding there was an unjust target on his son’s literal future existence, he acted in his best interest. Alas, by its very granting of clemency, as it were, there’s the acknowledgment that a “federal crime” has been adjudged committed. Brutally caught between the lofty innate protection of progeny and the offensive debasement of mendacity, Biden has opted for the latter in securing the former. A win-win? Or lose-lose? This is what has most JANUSly been bequeathed. Interestingly, his next action after the pardon, was to jump on a plane to Mother Africa, Angola, on a State visit. C’est toujours la même chose et destination. God bless the rains down in Africa!… These are the very bodies-of-conscience and centres-of-influence the purportedly egregiously aggrieved of most “developing mindsets” flee to, in seeking a just redress or harsh sentence on their own errant and recidivist elected officers and ostensible leaders: America as that refulgent beacon on the hill; totem of all righteous and inerrant.
It’s not the alrightness of their actions or inactions, It’s quite literally, homophonically, the mens rea. A typically manospheric tendency. One man’s midden being another’s compost. Who dares stare a gift “donkey” in the mouth now? Pardoning of the American 6th of January, 2021, ‘insurrectionists’ would now appear a fair-game fait accompli Amnesty. It’s a lesson to all those who seek to scamper and pander to Western moralities of “superior” – justice, culture, lifestyle and FairPlay – in their indigenous desire for equity, for whoever approaches that blindfolded fair-lady needs must do so with appreciably clean hands. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?; the guardsmen themselves being now shamelessly unmasked and unguarded. My late elder brother, colleague and friend, American, Lloyd WEAVER, once shared with me an article written by his Great Grandfather, an African-American, dis-espousing the significance of July 4th, American Independence Day celebrations, with this lament: “… Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” That was on July 5th, 1852. That man was none other than Frederick DOUGLASS. These are the same morality-police a great swathe of our people holler upon to willy-nilly invade any sovereign airspace or landmass to whisk away the “local baddy” to summary judgement in the land-of-the-free-and-brave. There are countless eye-openers to the hypocrisy-of-autocracy perpetrated by hegemonic regimes across the globe. This latest should serve as a reminder of YESHUAH’s admonition to the “first stone thrower…”. Those too swift to set their moralitycompass by everything European and North-American foreign may wish to ruminate a degree. Merely negotiating everyday living, presently, is, after all, political: What to include or excise from each daily budget in an existential economic clime. For every living soul. Zechariah 8: 16-17 “Speak the truth to one another…. I hate lying, injustice and violence.” A veritable prophetic echo if ever. Season’s cheer and a wisened 2025 in view.
Daré AKPATA lives in Lagos. @DAREDROCK
