Okay, tomorrow’s the day. Hidin’ Joe Biden will be inaugurated, and will immediately face profound challenges.
No, I’m not talking about COVID. As bad as it is, and it’s bad, there are worse things going on in the world’s left hand while we’re all transfixed with what’s happening in the right – at the moment on Trump’s pardons and how disgusting the legacy media can make them for an audience with the memory of a gnat. Or “domestic terrorism,” which is what the Left calls what ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter did all last summer, when the behavior is duplicated by the Right. Yep, five state capitols were “occupied” and vandalized without a peep from the folks now hyperventilating about what happened January 6. Look up Austin, Salem, Denver, Columbus and Madison if you don’t believe me – and think hard about the fact that these capitols were assaulted while our Progressive thugocracy extolled “The voice of the voiceless.”
But that too is a diversion. Here are the things to really worry about.
1. “Caravans” are beginning again: legions of very poor, low-skilled, non-English-speaking people from the least hospitable corners of Central America are pushing their way northward, secure in the knowledge that, when they arrive at our Southern border, they will be allowed to enter, claim “asylum” and vanish without a trace into America – until the Biden Administration makes them citizens, along with their 11 – or 15- or 20- or who-knows-how-many-million compatriots who have entered and remain in this country illegally. That’s a fairly large number of people whose lives in America have taught them that our laws are at a minimum only a suggestion and at most an inconvenience. As such, they will doubtless make ideal Democrats.
2. North Korea will begin missile tests again, probably using ICBMs built for Kim by his buddy in Beijing. He will then demand “negotiations” with the US over our forces in South Korea, the only thing standing between them and “reunification” by Kim’s million-man army.
3. Simultaneously or nearly so, China will take advantage of Biden’s distraction with Kim’s shenanigans to declare “transit exclusion zones” in the South China Sea; these may or may not immediately be accompanied by boarding of non-Chinese-flagged vessels for “inspections” and a surge in aggressive air patrols. Incidents like that in April, 2001 off Hainan Island are inevitable and will result in brinksmanship.
4. Independently, Iran will push forward on two fronts. Its Revolutionary Guards will begin seizing ships in a serious way in the Straits of Hormuz, seeking to drive up the price of oil which it is selling on the black market. It will also announce that it will begin “experimentally” to enrich its uranium holdings – already enriched to 20% in contravention to the “Iran Nuclear Deal” – which none of the other signatory parties is willing to enforce – to 90%. Bomb territory. It will announce that it is willing to forego this step in exchange for elimination of US sanctions – and possibly some of the “compensation for past behavior” President Rouhani has recently demanded of us.
All of the above are existential threats. The first threatens our way of life, our politics and the rule of law – theretofore the bedrock of all calculations of life in this country. The latter three are physical threats in face of which I expect the Biden Administration to fold like a cheap suit.
Say what you will about him, rogue nations were reticent to openly challenge Donald Trump: there was a large measure of uncertainty about whether they would be able to manage the response, whatever it might be. With Joe, there’s no uncertainty: he’ll “negotiate” until you eat his lunch and America’s interests be damned. There’s “decline” to manage here, as the unforgivably criminal nation of which he is president is slowly allowed to sink into oblivion.
But even “managed decline” has its repercussions. In view of impending capitulations to the tantrumizing of Kim Jong Un and China’s encroachments, Asian nations will certainly and not-so-slowly re-align toward Beijing as the inevitable hegemon. As the Biden Administration grovels and pays its way back into an increasingly dead “Iran Nuclear Agreement,” both Turkey and Israel will re-start their clandestine nuclear weapons programs; Saudi Arabia will simply buy its nukes through the latest iteration of Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan network. The Middle East, one of the globe’s least stable neighborhoods, will see a nuclear arms race between Shi’ite Iran and two of the foremost Sunni states. Nothing, absolutely nothing, good will come of this.
So hope for the best, but anticipate the worst. With Hidin’ Joe in charge there’s a lot more ways the worst can walk up and punch us in the mouth. Then what?
