Our current situation, threatening as it is to all we hold dear as Americans, is not in any way comfortable.  That said, it offers benefits.  One of them is this: people are revealing themselves for who they are.  Gone are the days of obfuscation, moderation, and triangulation.  If you're running for my school board, for example, I want to know where you stand on Critical Race Theory — in other words, whether you're out to destroy my children. Leave that off your Candidate's Position Statement, and the rest of it isn't helpful.

The Office Holder Formerly Known as Joe Biden told anyone still harboring doubts all he needed to know about him in half an hour Wednesday.

He addressed the graduates of the Coast Guard Academy, an elite group of 200, chosen from over 3,000 who apply.  For four years, they study science, warfare, and how to sail a tall ship.  Thirty-five percent are women.  I wager that all are indeed the "fierce patriots" Biden called them in his speech.

They listened politely as Biden did four things in rapid succession that revealed his character and fitness to lead.  Spoiler alert: he can claim neither.

He could not recall the name of the Coast Guard commander.  No doubt teleprompters were in place, as usual, and perhaps an earpiece, too, but it was beyond him.  He turned away from the microphone for help, then uttered a few garbled syllables.  This comes as no surprise to anyone who has observed his remarkable cognitive decline.

He borrowed without accreditation a longstanding quote about the Coast Guard — namely, that it is "the hard nucleus around which the Navy forms in time of war."  Doing so was a bad idea for a politician known for shameless plagiarism.  Ronald Reagan and Dick Cheney both used the quote in speeches, with greater care about its source.

Unlike them, Biden bungled the quote.  His truncated rendition made little sense.  Did he even grasp its meaning?  Like Ron Burgundy, he reads whatever is on the teleprompter, but a missing word or two ruins the punch line, as any comedian will tell you.

Done correctly, the old jab at the Navy, a far larger branch of the service, is very much an inside joke, one that is mildly funny to an audience of Coast Guard ensigns, if even to them.  Biden's misread version made no sense.  It got no laughs and no applause.

And that is when the real Joe Biden stood up.  Like a bombing third-rate comic, he heckled the audience.  "You're a really dull class," he began.  "C'mon, man.  Is the sun getting to you?"

Defenders will claim he was kidding.  He wasn't.  As professional joke-teller Ellen DeGeneres once put it, "You don’t know how to kid properly, then, because If you were, we’d both be laughing."  New Englanders of a previous generation have a term for it: "Half in jest, all in earnest."  His mean streak was showing.

Leftists like Biden desperately want to be liked, despite their contempt for half their fellow citizens.  They can hardly believe we don't all fawn over them as the sycophants in their entourages and the toadies in the media do.  In this respect, they lack the unvarnished honesty of tyrants like Stalin, who knew they were hated and feared and enjoyed it.  It was the price of the power they prized above all else.

To the extent that his thoughts are still his own, Joe Biden despises the values of every "fierce patriot" in his Coast Guard commencement audience and the values of the families who raised them to serve their nation.  Nonetheless, he can't seem to figure out why they wouldn't want to pose for a picture with him.

Like the vampires of legend, today's left can't stand the sight of a mirror.  We know who these are and how they feel about us.  They would rather not be reminded.

(UPDATE: Ellen DeGeneres's quotation has been expanded to give it more clarity.)

Charles Turot is a pseudonym.

Image: Biden at the Coast Guard Academy commencement.  YouTube screen grab.

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