Some people may actually be reluctant to prosecute Hunter Biden to avoid repeating the unjust persecution of Donald Trump. The belief in the possibility of political prosecutions was revealed in the jury selection process in Hunter's case. "Potential jurors were asked, 'Do you believe that Americans can be prosecuted based on their political beliefs and affiliations?' Many answered yes to the question ... the judge would then probe as to what they viewed as specific examples of political prosecution. Every potential juror who stated that they believed in political prosecution cited Donald Trump as the example. These potential jurors gave examples of CrossFire Hurricane and Donald Trump’s New York Conviction." That would ironically be a good reason not to proceed against the younger Biden, some would say.
Everyone has heard that two wrongs don't make a right and all are familiar with the expression of water under the bridge. If a past injustice is now behind us, then why not move on instead of repeating it? If Biden loses the election to Trump, payback will be denounced as unpatriotic and pointless. People who only a few days before were spouting fire and brimstone will talk about healing and making things whole again. Those who think this development impossible should note that this is just what Biden proposes in Gaza, Iran, and Ukraine.
Since Hamas should surrender in Gaza — but won't — it falls to Israel to capitulate so the fighting can stop and the world can get back to normal. Biden wants the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza when Israel withdraws and a ceasefire constituted even before Israel achieves its stated war aims. In this point of view, the opposite of revenge is "moving on." It's Netanyahu's fault for not getting past October 7, isn't it?
U.S. President Joe Biden, increasingly critical of Israel’s conduct of its war against Hamas militants in Gaza and a mounting Palestinian death toll, says in a new interview that there is “every reason” to believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dragged out the conflict to save himself politically.
In that mindset being stuck in the past is the greatest sin. Only recently the Biden administration pressed European allies, especially France and the UK, not to confront Iran for violating the sanctions on its nuclear program. "European diplomats have warned that failure to take action would undermine the authority of the IAEA...frustrated over what they see as U.S. efforts to undermine their approach." But the administration is "skeptical that a formal rebuke will achieve anything." So why not move on?
Moving on is also the theme of the Biden administration's stance toward Russia over Ukraine. In an opinion piece in Foreign Policy, three authors argue that the White House would prefer a "forever war" that could continue the conflict in Eastern Europe rather than make a futile attempt to restore the status quo ante in Ukraine. And it's not just abroad, in domestic policy the biggest example of letting bygones be bygones is COVID-19. The public is now belatedly realizing how much fabrication, manipulation, and outright deception took place in the matter of its origins. Dr. Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard writes in the NYT:
Dr. Anthony Fauci returned to the halls of Congress and testified before the House subcommittee investigating the Covid-19 pandemic. He was questioned about several topics related to the government’s handling of Covid-19, including how the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he directed until retiring in 2022, supported risky virus work at a Chinese institute whose research may have caused the pandemic. For more than four years, reflexive partisan politics have derailed the search for the truth about a catastrophe that has touched us all. It has been estimated that at least 25 million people around the world have died because of Covid-19, with over a million of those deaths in the United States. Although how the pandemic started has been hotly debated, a growing volume of evidence — gleaned from public records released under the Freedom of Information Act, digital sleuthing through online databases, scientific papers analyzing the virus and its spread, and leaks from within the U.S. government — suggests that the pandemic most likely occurred because a virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China. If so, it would be the most costly accident in the history of science.
Dr. Chan's phrase "the most costly accident in the history of science" doesn't even begin to cut it. Not the atomic bombings of Japan nor the Nazi execution machine come close to being comparable to the effects of the recent global pandemic. We don't even have a real word for screwups on this scale. In that sheer incomprehensibility may lie the biggest obstacle to seeking "accountability" in the COVID fiasco.
There is no easy way for the public to even visualize a disaster whose victims are five orders of magnitude more numerous than any catastrophe people are likely to encounter in ordinary life. It is like imagining a Googolplex, Skewe's number, or Graham's number. Conceiving its remedy is equally daunting. So apart from a few expressions of regret, the basic attitude toward Dr. Fauci and his administration's backers' role in the calamity is it's all past and done with.
Yet societies cannot just keep moving on. The problem with just moving on is that we loop back into the past. We cannot let things slide from an aversion to accountability if we are to have any hope of preventing their repetition. As former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy put the matter of COVID, "If we do not deliver accountability, we can expect worse from the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] in the future." To move on without consequences is to be stuck.
The goal of accountability is not to undo the past but to ensure that the future is different. Before "never again" degenerated into a slogan, it was first an actual resolution to do things differently going forward. Since we can be reasonably sure that our elites will get us into trouble again the COVID disaster poses a fundamental challenge to the trajectory of our technological civilization, rooted in the very heart of modern ideology.
Are we prepared to give carte blanche to our unrepentant elites at the high-stakes table of the scientific casino? To back the Dr. Faucis in perpetuity at a table where the wager is doubled each time? Humanity has finite wealth and population, and although our civilization may win the scientific gamble, more often than not one really big loss could still wipe us out.
We can't afford it. Too often accountability is associated with revenge, but it isn't that. The purpose of accountability is to remind politicians and bureaucrats that they have skin in the game and must pay their account before the next hand is dealt. If the ship goes down, they go down with it.
