Why I Won't Be Jumping on the Joe Biden Sympathy Bandwagon

I have always wanted this space to be an informative place. My favorite thing to do is write about stories that not a lot of people are talking about. Yes, I want to write about what I think about it, but sometimes there is a fine line between saying what you think and saying what you feel. The Joe Biden cancer diagnosis is one of those stories for me. By now, we have all heard the particulars, and we all know if we were one of those people who immediately thought of the timing of it all. For the last week, we have heard excerpts from various books that have been written about what was really going on with Joe’s cognitive ability, or the lack of it. But perhaps the most explosive tome to hit bookstores, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” written by CNN’s “fake” Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson of Axios, came out on Tuesday. Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis announcement came on Sunday.

Predictably, after the announcement came the usual thoughts and prayers came from all over the political spectrum. Most people don’t want politics to be part of a serious medical diagnosis. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t either. But how much more obvious do you have to be? Timing was my immediate thought. As more noise was made about the timing, reports began to surface that this diagnosis wasn’t new. Doctors began to speak out and say there was no way that Biden’s condition could be what it is overnight. Now, the question is, did Joe Biden, his family, primarily Jill Biden, and his handlers cover it up? If Joe Biden has been living with cancer throughout his presidency and covered it up, the American people have a right to know. It has to be investigated.

But if Joe Biden, Jill Biden, and his handlers are using a cancer diagnosis as a tool to fend off explosive political revelations, that is in an entirely different realm. Here is where the “feel” part for me comes in. Some may not like what I have to say. Unfortunately, it turns out that I am not the person my family, friends, coworkers, and my dog think I am. But here, because we live in America, I get to say what I think. As stated above, many were very quick to jump on the thoughts and prayers, and illness transcends politics bandwagon. Not me. Another unfortunate fact is that nearly everyone has been touched by cancer themselves or has lost a loved one to cancer. Cancer is like grief; we all experience and process it in different ways. I watched both parents deal with cancer, one died from it. My mom survived breast cancer twice and esophageal cancer once. My dad died from esophageal cancer. His journey was a short one. On June 6, 2009, my parents spent their 50^th wedding anniversary in the ER when my dad began to vomit blood that morning. It was the only symptom he ever had.

As he began the treatment process, things seemed to go as well as could be expected. He was tolerating chemo well. Then, one morning as I was walking out the door to work, my mom called. She was hysterical. My dad had fallen in the bathroom and could not get up, and of course, she could not lift him. He had fractured a vertebra in his spine, and for the final three months of his life, he was paralyzed from the chest down. Three months, you ask? Yes, three months. He was diagnosed in June and died in September. But cancer was not done with him yet. In the last few weeks of his life, he developed horrible lesions on his face. It was really kind of a cruel cherry on the miserable cake of it all. The morning he died, as we sat in his hospital room, I remember my aunt looking at him and saying of his facial lesions, “Why would God do that to such a handsome man?”

For Joe Biden, his family, or anyone around him to think that lying about his condition is okay, is the most infuriating and offensive thing I have ever seen and/or heard. By doing so, that lie for political power and retaining some kind of relevance, makes light of everything my father went through in that short three month span of time. It’s a slap in the face to every other cancer patient and those who love them. How dare you use a disease that has impacted so many lives just to gain sympathy ahead of political revelations! It makes me shake with anger every time I think about it.

I know that many people’s answer to me would be, because that is what their faith has taught them, to pray for Joe Biden and his family. If that works for you, great. But I will never have an ounce of sympathy for such a miserable individual. Frankly, faith aside, I cannot understand why more people don’t feel as I do. Another answer to me might be that Joe Biden will get his judgement day in another place, and that it is not my place to judge. I agree, he will. But sorry, in the privacy of my own mind, I will heap as much judgement on him as I want.

Some may see me as unfeeling, uncaring, or rabidly partisan at a time I shouldn’t be, or that, as conservatives, we are better than what the left’s reaction to such an announcement by Donald Trump would be. Maybe others can find that within them. I will not. I choose to save my better self for other people and causes that are worthy of it. It might make me the black sheep of conservatives or something, but that’s okay, I’m willing to risk it.