There are some things that one simply does not discuss on the campaign trail, or even refer to. This list should not have to be mentioned, simply because good sense would dictate healthy boundaries. But in a time when it is ever more common to “break boundaries”, the question of “why not?” can theoretically be applied to the campaign trail, but not always with success or good wisdom. Such one can say about recent comments made by Presidential candidate Joe Biden, who decided it appropriate to talk about necrophilia while on campaign.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s story about a Marine veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder was “abhorrent,” retired Marine Johnny “Joey” Jones told “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday.
Jones, who lost both of his legs in an IED explosion in Afghanistan, added that the story “shows how out of touch he is, and I’m personally offended by it.”
Jones, a Fox News contributor, made the comments reacting to a story the former vice president shared during his first general election campaign visit to Florida, the largest traditional general election battleground state, where Biden touted veteran issues.
“There was a Marine veteran that had been deployed a total of six times… Dodge Ram started down the street in front of his house. .. [He] saw a woman walking her dog, ran over her, killed her, killed the dog, put her in the back of his pickup truck… molested her … came home … and called the state police and said, ‘I just killed someone,’” Biden said in Tampa on Tuesday.
“There was a voice in my head saying, ‘I have to kill someone,’” he added.
Joe Biden says President Trump’s claim that he signed VA Choice is a figment of his imagination or a lieVideo
Biden then said, “We have to end the stigma surrounding mental health treatment.”“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard a presidential candidate say about men and women serving,” Jones said reacting to Biden’s story.
He pointed out that when President Trump ran for office there were “a few things I didn’t like a well” but stressed that what he heard Biden say Tuesday was “the worst thing,” which “undid 10 years of work in the military nonprofit mental health community of actually removing a stigma.”
“These men and women may lose their will to live, but they don’t lose their soul,” Jones went on to say. “They may hurt themselves, but they don’t go hurting others. It’s very rare, and for him [Biden] to tell that story just because he thought it had some shock value and somehow likened himself to this issue just shows how out of touch he is.” (source)
It is to Biden’s credit that he is trying to use a serious story to highlight the fact that a lot of veterans have mental problems, are suffering and need help. This is a major point that is often overlooked, as the American veteran in spite of all of the pomp accorded to him is so frequently treated like trash- used, abused, and then discarded. There are many sides to this, and while one does not want to forget about personal responsibility, it is very difficult to argue that the problem is no more than an issue of a lack of personal discipline when there are such an abundance of problems all coming from the same source.
However, what Biden did is not an issue of the real troubles that veterans face. Rather, it is a matter of taste.
It is true that there is a lot of degeneracy in the American public, but there are still some (for now) boundaries left, and for most people, necrophilia is one of them.
People are not going to pay attention to any veracity in this context possibly spoken of from Biden. Rather, they are going to likely take his comments and see them as more ramblings from an old man of questionable sanity that go into the same category of his “corn pop” and “lying dog-faced pony soldier” comments. They only portray him as a person who is more suited to his rocking chair in an elderly care center instead of a man in charge of the world’s most powerful nation and military.
This is another warning that Biden is not as strong as he may be portrayed as against Trump, for his avalanche of gaffes will likely come back to ‘bite’ him, politically speaking, at the polls.