Seven years sober. Federal pardon. Half a million people watching him make crack cocaine jokes with more self-possession than most people manage on their best day.
We spent years using Hunter Biden as a political prop. His addiction was a weapon before it was a story. His recovery was ignored because recovery does not move the same needle that relapse does. The caricature was more useful than the person, so the caricature is what we got.
That's over now. He is speaking in his own voice for the first time — unmediated by lawyers, White House optics, or the campaign calculus of people who needed him manageable. What's coming through is something the prop version couldn't carry: actual human texture. Wit without defensiveness. Accountability without performance. A son who watched his father get used and hasn't pretended otherwise.
You don't have to agree with his politics. You don't have to rehabilitate the Biden presidency to receive this honestly. What you owe him — what we owe anyone who survives what he survived and speaks about it without self-pity — is the same thing Patti Davis asked us to give: the recognition that there are a lot of Hunter Bidens in this world. Most of them never get heard. He finally is.
That's worth something. Receive it that way.
I am a US citizen, but I have never in my life been so disappointed with the US. The reasons are many:
1. The US people have elected a president who represent all the deadly sins. How could they do that? Are they so morally deprived?
2. Lying has been normalized. Trump made it the standard.
3. The US used to claim the non-partisan rule of law, but SCOTUS has been proven utterly corrupt & obedient to Trump.
4. The US used to boast about its checks and balances, but they don't exist. The republicans in Congress are obedient servants of one man.
5. The US used to oppose corruption, but the Trump crime family is probably the most corrupt ruling family in the world. How can SCOTUS & the republicans in Congress accept that?
6. The US used to be considered a democracy, but massive gerrymandering & voter discrimination make US elections not very democratic.
7. Reporters without Broders have rightly lowered the US to rank #64 in its sound World Press Freedom index. the US no longer has media freedom, because of extortion and oppression through defamation court cases.
8. The US used to be the security guarantee of the free world, but Trump only praises Xi Jingping, Putin, Lukashenko & Kim Jong Un.
Is the US able to extract itself from the Trump trap, in which it has fallen so deeply?