Saturday, April 24, 2021

Hunter Biden Is the Unwitting Poster Boy for Our Sham Meritocracy

Hunter Biden wanted to be an artist, perhaps a writer or a musician.

By his own confession, Hunter Biden is a liar, a cheat and a sneak.

At least, that's the story Mykola Zlochevsky, Burisma's owner and president, tells Hunter, and the one Hunter chooses to believe.

What are we to make of this sometimes harrowing, sometimes picaresque tale of a man backing his way into wealth, albeit the kind that is only modestly absurd in an era of oligarchic billionaires? Hunter Biden is no billionaire; he is simply one of the many sons and daughters of wealth and power bumbling along in the United States, making do with merely millions or tens of millions of dollars.

Joe Biden remains largely off-stage, although Hunter goes to great lengths to defend his father against allegations that he plagiarized speeches by former British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, and that he was far too cozy with segregationist senators like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond.

At the conclusion of Beautiful Things, Hunter is saved for the umpteenth time from his own worst impulses, this time by a South African woman named Melissa, whose piercing blue eyes remind Hunter of his late brother's and his late brother's wife's.

Hunter and Melissa get married in a shotgun wedding and Hunter begins to paint again, although it is unclear that he has ever painted before.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/hunter-biden-beautiful-things-joe-biden-american-meritocracy 

No comments: