UNCOUTH.

On Hunter Biden, and the unspoken value system that our media and political elites seek to defend

I do not care about Hunter Biden.

President Biden’s adult failson has been in prison because he broke the law. But he was also in prison because of his last name. His crime was filling out a gun permit while a drug addict, and checking a box that said "I am not a drug addict.” He also failed to pay taxes, and then paid them back with interest. These are not crimes that people usually go to prison for. Had his father not been the President, and had Hunter Biden not become a fixation of conspiratorial, ratings-hungry conservative media, his case would not have gone to trial.

And now he is out of prison, because his father, still-President Biden, pardoned him. I didn’t much care about him being in prison. I can’t summon the will to care about him being out of prison, either.

The Washington Post, and much of the rest of the pundit-class cares a great deal. Well, not because of Hunter Biden himself. But because of the optics, and the precedent.

Yesterday’s WaPo homepage. Courtesy of Kevin Kruse

This is of a piece with a broader pattern. Our political and media elites have made it clear through their actions that they value the appearance of order and propriety over anything else.

Donald Trump was elected President. Ergo he is legitimate, and must be afforded the same polite treatment offered to any other President-elect. Wipe the slate clean, so as to not sully the office he is set to occupy. We must all hope against hope that he behaves himself better his time around. And, if he does not, then it is our duty to cluck our tongues and register respectful, muted disapproval.

There is a right and proper way for Presidents to behave.

And there is a right and proper way for people to behave toward Presidents.

To do otherwise is to endanger social order and stability. (And it is maintenance of the social order, above all else, that our political, media, and economic elites value above all else.)

In pardoning his own son, Joe Biden did not behave right and properly. It smacks of favoritism, as though he put the well-being of his disappointing son ahead of the duties of his office. Even worse, he stated repeatedly he would not issue this pardon. Lying is bad. Presidents ought not lie.

So it is our duty to cluck our tongues and register disapproval. And that disapproval should perhaps be just a bit louder, as proof that WE show no such favoritism.

It is all just so… contrived.

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Here is something I am quite confident of: had Kamala Harris been elected President, Hunter Biden would not have been pardoned.

The appearance of propriety matters to the extent that it helps you to govern. It matters to the extent that it helps maintain public faith in the rule of law. If the Democratic Party was still in power, or if the incoming Republican administration was still bound by norms and precedents, then Biden-the-institutionalist would have been dissuaded from taking this step.

But the appearance of propriety does not matter anymore.

There is no strategic upside to this pardon. It does not help Democrats. It hands Republicans a charge of hypocrisy to bray about on social media and cable news panels for a day or two. One should not, under normal circumstances, engage in costly signaling behavior that carries no strategic upside.

But, in the world as it now stands, there is no meaningful strategic downside either. Donald Trump already abused the pardon power while in office. He announced during the campaign that he intends to pardon the January 6th insurrectionists. He is, himself, a convicted felon whose sentence is now suspended indefinitely.

And he was elected anyway.

Trump’s nominee to run the FBI, Kash Patel, is a QAnon guy. Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is… hell, where do we even begin with that one? Elon Musk is singling out public employees for campaigns of harassment and intimidation. Last week he tweeted that whistleblower Eugene Vindman “committed treason against the United States, for which he will pay the appropriate penalty.” None of this is right or proper. And unlike Hunter Biden’s pardon, all of it matters a great deal.

The Trump administration might be undermined by its own incompetence. But it will not be brought to heel through persuasive appeals to the better angels of their nature.

They will govern as they see fit.

There is nothing right or proper about the things they see fit.

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Democracy, at its core, is a compromise between political elites and the mass public. The public is given the vote as a pressure release valve of sorts — a form of legitimate dissent that affects the composition of the government. Elites, as a result, enjoy unparalleled social stability.

I wrote about this phenomenon two summers ago, in an essay titled “Huxley’s Electorate.” Here’s the relevant passage:

the key innovation that has made democracy preferable to all other forms of government is that it produces a legitimate avenue for social dissent. Critics of the current regime have a pressure release valve — they need not overtrhow the government, they merely have to vote them out in the next election. Convince their fellow citizens that the government is corrupt or wrongheaded. Run for office oneself. This legitimate path allows, in theory, for self-correction. If elites run too far afoul of public will, the public will select different elites — no gallows required. And, at a minimum, it also increases social stability, because public discontent is channeled toward legitimate avenues. (The most vocal opponents of the George W. Bush regime did not brew molotov cocktails; they wrote blog posts and knocked on doors.)

The great existential fear for elites is that the masses will seize their belongings and physically imperil their bodies. All human bodies are frail. That’s equally true for billionaires and bricklayers. If you own a private jet, a thing that you would not like to be reminded of is that your corporeal form is just as vulnerable as the next persons. (Ultimately, that is. Gold-plated health care is nice. But no one can buy immortality.)

I have come to think of this as the hidden, unspoken ideology of our media and political elites. They behave, in word and in deed, as though what is most important is the protection and maintenance of the status hierarchy.

A thing is wrong and objectionable if it is uncouth — crass behavior that undermines faith in social institutions and the social order.

The Supreme Court intervened multiple times to help Donald Trump in the 2024 election. They unanimously ignored the plain text of article 3 of the Constitution to ensure that Trump would be on Colorado’s ballot, despite engaging in insurrection. And of course they did! Consider how awkward it would have been if the state of Colorado (and perhaps other states as well!) simply did not include the Republican Party’s nominee for President on the ballot in November. Republicans in Colorado chose to vote for the insurrectionist during the primaries. Surely they ought not be deprived of the right to vote for him in November.

That would have been uncouth.

Likewise, of course the Court prevented Donald Trump from facing a federal trial for his role in the January 6th attack while running for reelection. And of course his sentencing after his conviction in New York was delayed, first until after the election and, now, indefinitely.

Consider the optics of a Presidential nominee standing trial, or serving prison time, while running for office.

It simply would not appear proper. It certainly would not sit right with his supporters. If he lost under such circumstances, they might not view the election as legitimate. (And we have seen how his supporters behave when they do not view an election as legitimate!)

Now that he is, once again, the President-elect, our media and political elites are reverting to their core social behaviors. Joe Biden is taking polite photo-ops with the President-elect, and promising to attend his inauguration. Democratic governors are promising to seek common ground and find bipartisan consensus with the administration.

It isn’t that they did not mean it when they called Donald Trump a fascist and a threat to Democracy. They meant it. But they lost anyway. And now the social order is imperiled, and they are reverting to form, doing all they know how to do to shore up trust and faith in the system, in the hopes that it will all turn out alright.

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All these behaviors, like the tut-tutting over the Hunter Biden pardon, are contrivances.

Donald Trump attempted to overthrow the government when he lost the 2020 election. He was never held accountable for it, because holding him accountable would have been uncouth. And now he has legitimately won re-election. So it would be uncouth to dwell on those past actions.

This farce will continue, indefinitely, until the system utterly collapses.

Hunter Biden’s pardon is front page news — not because anyone cares about Hunter Biden at all, but because it is the type of Presidential misbehavior that our elite media knows how to object to.

Kash Patel’s intent to turn the FBI against his “enemies list” is a lesser news story, right up until the moment he throws those enemies in prison. Because we wouldn’t want to undermine public trust in the FBI, would we? That, too, would be uncouth.

There is, ultimately, a simple reason why most of our journalistic and political elites will fail to offer meaningful opposition to the incoming Trump regime.

Doing so would be improper. And their unspoken-but-genuine value system, all along, has been to defend propriety and the social order.

So they’ll bicker over Hunter Biden, and then they’ll bicker over the next thing, and it will all be contrivances and pleasantries, while the regime installs itself.

I wish it were not so. I wish for a great many things.

But if we are going to maintain democracy, it will require a type of counter-pressure that does not place social stability and propriety above all other values.

We shouldn’t look to our media or political elites to offer that resistance. They have self-selected to never provide it.