We need to talk about Hunter Biden
You know and I know that most of what we see on social media regarding the president’s son is in bad faith.
There are conservatives doing anything they can to find examples of wedge issues and hypocrisies to claw their way back to executive power. When you have over 80 million votes for anyone but your guy, you’re going to do whatever it takes to get back in the game.
For Republican operatives, Hunter Biden is the gift that keeps on giving.
The Make America Great Again crowd keeps Hunter’s name trending, but every time a new recording or email comes out that shows how deep Hunter’s addict brain had him into destructive, hurtful, and illegal behaviors, people on the left react the same way every time-
“Why should I care about someone that isn’t an elected official? It’s not like Joe has him doing state business like Jared and Ivanka.”
Well, as a black man in America, I’m about to tell you exactly why you should care.
If you are a liberal that has become dependent on the minority vote to retain power and push for progress in this country, you need to know that the more that comes out about the consequence-free illegal activities of the president’s son, the more some of us are reminded that nearly 400,000 people in this country are incarcerated for drug offenses, a number that disproportionately affects people of color.
Black people overwhelmingly forgave Joe Biden for his roles in 1986 and 1994 crime bills in order to cast a vote against a guy in Donald Trump who didn’t seem to see anything wrong with the result and legacy of those laws.
But here we are in 2022, with jails still full of people that committed non-violent drug offenses. Many are there because of the harsh sentencing involved with Hunter’s drug of choice in a lot of these leaked videos- crack cocaine. Of course they don’t have the benefit of having a daddy in the Senate or the White House.
They also don’t have the advantage of having lived in the under-policed neighborhoods where Hunter Biden had the privilege of struggling with his addiction.
I’m not here to advocate for Hunter Biden to be punished, or for this ongoing scandal to take down the Bidens. I’ll leave that to conservatives on Twitter. I want for Hunter Biden what I want for anyone struggling with addiction- opportunities for peace, prosperity, and amends with anyone they hurt along the way.
What I am here to say is that if this administration expects to continue to carry the minority vote, they need to see these Hunter Biden stories the same way that a lot of us see them, as another exhausting example of how things work one way for us and another for them.
If Hunter Biden can avoid jail, and enjoy the benefits of multiple stints at rehabilitation facilities, we should at the very least be aggressively reducing and commuting the sentences of Americans whose penalties directly resulted from the laws his father, and our current president, put into place.
Let that sink in.
