It's pretty clear that Joe Biden loves Hunter.  On the one hand, he seems to have used him, which is not loving.  While Beau Biden got the legitimate career (perhaps because he was not a drug addict), it was Hunter who became Biden's bag man.  Hunter traveled hither and yon with Dad, picking up massive "business" contracts along the way, all for projects that he was incapable of accomplishing, and not just because he was a drug addict.  Drug addiction or not, there was nothing about Hunter's abilities or experience that qualified him to sit on Burisma's board.

On the other hand, putting aside Hunter's usefulness to Daddy Biden, it's clear from the many affectionate messages from Joe to Hunter that were found on the hard drive that Joe loves Hunter and isn't shy about showing it.  Indeed, I think part of Hunter's problem throughout his life has been that Joe was incapable of giving him the boundaries children need.  For a child traumatized by his mother's death (and potentially affected by the head injuries he sustained in the accident that killed her), getting nothing more than a whole lot of Daddy's love, plus all the perks of fame, power, and money, was terribly destructive.  This was a boy who needed boundaries and structure.

If Joe had ever shown some tough love, Hunter might have had a very different life trajectory.  Biden seems to have enabled his drug habit, including looking away when Hunter engaged in massive drug and prostitute binges, such as the one at the Chateau Marmont.  (It's even possible that Biden, even if only inadvertently, funded that Chateau Marmont binge.)

Additionally, a stay in prison might have scared Hunter straight.  (I've known a handful of middle-class boys who got scared straight in prison.  So did Robert Downey, Jr.)  Certainly, there was a law in place that would have sent Hunter to prison — and Biden has boasted about putting it on the books.  That's why this split-screen video of Biden boasting about crack crackdowns and Hunter sucking on his crack pipe is so powerful:

This is the most devastating video on the Internet pic.twitter.com/0clTee6gUs

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 28, 2021

But Hunter never paid the price for his addiction.  Because it would have been too scandalous for Senator Biden's, then Vice President Biden's, and then (gag) President Biden's son to go to jail like a common criminal, that law is never mentioned when Joe or Hunter is around.  And it's reasonable to believe that the doting papa made sure the law stayed far from his erring son.

And that's where Thomas Lehrer comes in.  For those of you unfamiliar with Tom Lehrer's Oedipus Rex, it really does recite the whole story of the fabled king who, because fate decreed, killed his father and married his mother.  When Oedipus discovers what he's done, he blinds himself.  It's all very tragic — except in Lehrer's musical retelling it's wonderfully funny:

As you can see, verse after verse reminds us that, no matter the problems in his life, at least Oedipus "loved his mother."  Only in the last two verses does Lehrer remind us that there is such a thing as loving one's mother too much.

In the same way, it's possible to love a child too much.  Biden's relationship with his boy seems to have gone from loving to unhealthy, and both Hunter and America have suffered greatly as a result.  Hunter, who is a talented graphic artist (he really is, although his attractive pictures are worth, at most, hundreds, not hundreds of thousands), might have had a satisfying and meaningful life.  As for America, perhaps she wouldn't have become a Chinese colony without the American people having a say in the matter, something that happened because Biden sold us out (and, perhaps, was blackmailed because China has incredibly compromising footage of Hunter doing naughty things in Beijing).

Image: Biden, Hunter, and crack cocaine.  Twitter screen grab.

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