MountainMornings

There’s much ado about Hunter Biden’s pardon. One of the things I learned in Catholic School was to ‘put myself in someone else’s shoes.’ What if you were President Joe for a day – would you want to pardon your son with a history of drug and alcohol addiction who had turned his life around after a long political investigation? He lied on a gun form while high on crack cocaine and didn’t pay his taxes. OTOH, he didn’t intimidate witnesses or try to overthrow the government. So, YES, I’d pardon my son.

Then again, whenever I bump into someone in a crowd, I usually say, “Pardon me.” So I’m an equal opportunity pardoner.

It’s a habit I picked up when I was first living in Boston, Massachusetts in the 60s, and continued while living in the Berkshires. Back in NJ the usual retort was a quick, “Sorry,” but not for me. Maybe my old Catholic school upbringing was to blame; how many times had I blurted out in confession, “Pardon me Father….?” It just seemed a bit more dignified, maybe even a little royal, to pardon people. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the word PARDON means to FORGIVE:

“to forgive someone for something they have said or done. This word is often used in polite expressions…. If someone who has committed a crime is pardoned, that person is officially forgiven and their punishment is stopped:“

Forgive me if i see nothing polite about the politics of this week’s Presidential pardon of Joe Biden’s son Hunter on gun and tax evasion issues is nothing new.

In fact, George Washington dismissed charges in 1795 against two Western Pennsylvania farmer/rebels, John Mitchell and Philip Weigel, involved in the Whiskey Rebellion! It would seem prescient that our young nation’s first crisis was a result of Hamilton imposing a tax on a domestic product that was grown and manufactured on the frontier – whiskey. The farmers refused to pay the tax and the resulting violent conflict was framed as a Federalist vs Anti-Federalist issue. Indeed, when Thomas Jefferson was elected President he repealed the Whiskey Tax!

“Residents viewed this tax as yet another instance of unfair policies dictated by the eastern elite that negatively affected American citizens on the frontier.” https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/whiskey-rebellion

Let’s jump ahead, past Confederate and Jimmy Hoffa pardons, to the one I remember in September, 1974. I don’t remember where I was at the time, but I do remember the feeling. Like our nation had gone through so much pain with the Watergate hearings and someone had to pay for trying to interfere with our election. When Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon I felt betrayed, not just because of his covert shenanigans, but because he had lied about stopping the war in Vietnam. I actually hated that man!

Deep down I knew that Ford was right by not being vindictive and preemptively saving us from a long trial. After all, Nixon resigned.

Today we have a twice impeached, convicted felon about to re-enter the White House. Mr T never thought to give us the courtesy of resigning, instead he sat idly by while insurrectionists attacked the Capitol. He wanted his Vice-President to overturn the will of the People. And one of his most controversial pardons was issued to his Son-in-Law’s father, Charles Kushner in 2020 after being convicted of “… tax fraud, witness tampering and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission.”

Just knowing that one of Mr T’s first acts as President may be to pardon the Jan 6th rioters makes me sick. But like the BBC once said, one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. It’s just that ever since a hanging chad in FL and a 5-4 Supreme Court vote stopped the five week fight in 2000 of Al Gore vs George Bush, I’ve been disenchanted with our Electoral College. Gore won the popular vote by more than a half million votes. I wonder where we would be now if Gore had been elected when 9/11 happened?

My point is, Democrats didn’t storm the Hill and defecate in the halls of Congress.

My idea of ‘freedom’ certainly differs from the MAGA crowd. They want to be free of government interference, but the funny thing is so do we. We don’t want legislators in our doctors’ offices and they don’t want them in their business either. We also don’t want religion in our public schools or censorship in our libraries, conversely MAGA wants more God in our public places and they love pulling books off shelves.

I’m nostalgic for the good ole days when Washington DC could function, when deals got done and a consensus was reached. When senators went out to lunch together and congressmen and women played baseball together. When truth and trust were collective values. Pardon me for thinking we might return to a more congenial, centrist government eventually – a time when the farmers and the cowboys, the coastal elites and the working class middle of the country could be friends.

Here is the Bride’s Thanksgiving American pie!

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