President Joe Biden accompanied by his son Hunter Biden and his grandson Beau leave a book store as they walk in downtown Nantucket Mass., Friday, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Filipinization of American Democracy is happening before our eyes.

What’s that? It’s the emergence of family matters.

It matters.

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After a four-day weekend of mass consumption including holiday food and shopping for pre-tariff goods, you must have learned something after all that intense time with the people you love.

Family means so much more than the politics that divides us.

With just weeks left in his presidency, Joe Biden faced an urgent family issue. He could allow a non-biased party to judge his son Hunter, facing prison time for a felony charge involving a bureaucratic gun application form and a federal tax evasion charge.

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Or Biden could intervene, something the president said for the last year he wouldn’t do.

But the president couldn’t trust the system to be impartial and fair, especially with how it’s being set up for a new vindictive Trump administration.

In the end, the president acted realistically, and like a father, used all the constitutional power he had to save his son.

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He granted Hunter Biden a full and unconditional pardon for all his crimes in question.

And then took the case to the American people.

“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son—and that is wrong,” Biden said in a statement released Sunday night.

“There has been an effort to break Hunter—who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution,” Biden continued. “In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me—and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here.”

And this is where the rule of law gets screwed up by politics.

Is there any doubt that the new president-elect, Donald Trump – after nominating a list of unqualified and inexperienced sycophants to head the disruption of massive government agencies including the Justice department – will go after all his political enemies next?

Vengeance politics coming

Just this weekend, Trump named Kash Patel to be head of the FBI. Patel is not the South Asian most in our community thought would be the focus of attention in Washington at this time.

But there he is, with no managerial experience in law enforcement, nominated to head the FBI.

Patel is an affirmative action hire of the worst kind. His only qualification is his undying loyalty to Donald Trump, not to the rule of law. He will do anything the new president wants.

Patel is Trump’s model minority.

Matt Gaetz won’t be attorney general heading up the Justice Department, alongside him. But Pam Bondi, the Gaetz replacement is no less a Trump loyalist. If she is confirmed, the odds of Hunter Biden being used to settle a political score is sky high.

“I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision,” said Biden as he ended his statement.

Do we understand? 

Just remember Biden’s feeling for AAPIs.

When Biden took office, it was his administration that signed executive orders to reassure a frightened and concerned  Asian American community.

During the pandemic years, we had been scapegoated for the virus by no less than the 45th president, Donald Trump.

Trump’s careless rhetoric using racist descriptions like “China Virus” and “Kung Flu” created a racial animus that was almost as viral as COVID.

The attacks and transgressions numbered in the thousands. The racism of the day spawned the counter-movement, #STOPAsianHate.

After winning the election, Biden showed he had our backs. He made it a big deal to remind the entire country that we were Americans and that we belonged.

Contrast that with how Trump still loves to aggressively say the word “China,” squinting eyes, nose and face, as he chomps down on his teeth.

Trump supporters will look at the law, shake their heads and see Biden’s intervening on behalf of his son as hypocrisy.

And they’ll use it as an excuse to justify every wrongheaded and potentially disruptive thing Trump intends to the federal government.

This is how politics is played. It’s all about power. When you have it. You use it. However, you want.

Trump will have it and use it.

Wisely? So far, for his cabinet, he’s nominated two sex offenders, one a former Fox News host. And there’s the AANHPI Russian operative Trump wants to be head of intelligence. There’s the wrestling exec who doesn’t know education to run that department. And a TV doctor who would be bored running Medicare. They all would rather be doing something else. But this gig is easy. They’re all in service to Trump, not the law. And not the American people.

This weekend’s “Crony Alert,”  Trump picked real estate developer  Charles Kushner, his son-in-law Jared’s  father to be ambassador to France. Charles Kushner served prison time for tax evasion, and for luridly retaliating against a federal witness, his brother-in-law. Trump pardoned Charles Kushner in 2020. Trump knows how this works.

And now so does Biden.

By pardoning his son Hunter, Biden is using the power he has left. It’s legal, counters the right wing political play, and is totally understandable as an act of filial love.

I only wish he could have relied on justice being done without a pardon.  On balance, whatever Biden is doing is nothing, compared to the felony convictions of Trump, and any other cockamamie idea Trump wants to install.

But the political right will make Biden pay for saving his son.

That’s the sad reality of where American democracy will be come January 2025.

More like the Philippines and changed, maybe irrevocably.

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He writes for the Inquirer.net’s US Channel. See him on www.patreon.com/emilamok or on www.YouTube.com/@emilamok1

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