On December 1^st, 2024, Joe Biden, the 46^th President of the United States unconditionally pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, for all his convictions. This means he was pardoned and freed from any wrongdoing for his federal gun case, federal tax case, civil IRS, Fox News and defamation lawsuits. Essentially, this means that Hunter Biden is forgiven and does not have to spend time in jail and repay the fines he was given. However, this does not involve civil cases unless they are directly related to criminal convictions, which from our current knowledge, they are not.

I, alongside most people who are interested in the political arena, find this ironic given the previous years of equality and equity talk we’ve had to endure. I tried finding the perfect word to describe the general feeling surrounding this decision, and the only one that works is schadenfreude, which roughly translates to “harm-joy” in German. So, to me, it takes some poetic justice for a man who proposed equality for all, to then pardon his son from federal crimes six weeks before he leaves office.

Now, I perfectly understand. Like most, I would also most probably pardon my family if I was in the same situation. It comes from the simplest self-critical capability to know that if my family were put in the same scenario, a similar outcome would occur, and anyone who says otherwise is either delusional or has the opposite understanding of morality to me.

The reason this decision has created such a big issue on the internet is that it has finally shown the general population how far presidential power can reach. As someone who is politically interested, I can understand how a leader of a nation is supposed to represent most voters without undermining those who did not vote for them. However, whatever perspective you have about a leader’s power, the only ideology that fits with this action is an authoritarian one, as there is no non-authoritarian perspective that would allow anyone to be so far above the law, that they can pardon their son without good reason.

Not only has this completely shown the hypocrisy of the 2020 democratic presidency, but it has also shown the complete and utter incompetence of the people within this administration. From Karine Jean-Pierre’s consistent denial that this would ever occur to Joe Biden himself saying that he would not pardon his son, the true lack of integrity has finally been put on full display after such a crashing end to his leadership.

If anything, this action shows that there needs to be a further separation between the personal and public roles of a president. I understand there is sometimes a need for a pardon, or at least there is a decent reason for a need, but for something such as this, a federal pardon is a complete mockery of the already failing political system further generations will have to inherit.

Not only this, but there are rumours circulating that he also wants to preemptively pardon Liz Cheney, Anthony Fauci, and Adam Schiff for their actions before the Trump administration gets into office.

Now, I don’t know about you, but personally, I do not want my main politician to have the ability to let his employees off the hook for unlawful activity. However, this is not just a practice within America. The United Kingdom has also had similar levels of “let-offs” for malpractice. Take Boris Johnson changing the consequences for bullying civil servants so Priti Patel would not have to rescind her position. Whilst it is not on the media level of a national pardon, it holds similar abuse of powers, with the exact same feeling to the general population.

Essentially, these acts inform the voting populace that a hierarchy does exist, and that the people with political power are above you. When, originally, a democratic voting system was intended to be the voice of the people, it now instead voices the opinion of the biggest corporations, waving a flag of financial improvement and subclass enforcement.

As a result, it comes as no surprise that we live in the most polarising society in my (relatively short) lifetime. Instead of focusing on trying to reduce the powers that the people at the top have, we fall into the trap of permanently concentrating on the opposite party’s objectives. Once we realise that anyone at the top of the “hierarchy” abuses their power for personal or close relation gain, they are no longer a friend of the people and should instead be recognised as the people’s traitor.

The unfortunate aspect of this point of view is that almost all politicians in human history have conducted traitor-like acts, whether it’s passing harmful policies, taking bribes, or literally enacting martial law to stop the accession of amendments they disagree with. In the end, it doesn’t exactly matter what has been committed, the act of choosing themselves over the represented, shows their true aspirations.