Compute! Compute!

By John Podhoretz

Friday, January 20, 2023

The “liar’s paradox” is one of the oldest and most amusing logic puzzles. It is generally assigned to an ancient Cretan philosopher named Epimenides, who was reputed to have declared that “all Cretans are liars,” but it’s best known to Baby Boomers from an immortal episode of Star Trek.

Captain Kirk tells a humanoid robot named Norman that everything his antagonist Harry Mudd says is a lie. Mudd then says, “I am lying.” Norman the robot responds by saying, “But if you always lie, then you must be telling the truth, but you cannot tell the truth, so saying you are telling the truth is a lie.” Norman repeats “compute, compute,” he begins to shake, smoke comes out of his ears, and he shuts down because the inconsistency is too much for it to handle.

Watching the mainstream media and Democratic politicians cope with the news that Joe Biden mishandled classified information dating back to the Obama administration is amusing in precisely the same way that episode of Star Trek is. Having practically driven themselves into ecstasies of righteous rage at the way Donald Trump purloined classified materials from his White House, and having convinced themselves that this crime would finally be the way Trump would be taken down, they found themselves forced to confront evidence that Biden had done precisely the same thing years earlier.

Compute! Compute!

Well, first, the two cases are very different, we were told. Very different, you see! Trump clearly knew he was doing wrong. It was Trump who shoved the documents into boxes, Trump who said the documents were his documents, and Trump who told his lawyers to say he had returned all the documents when he had not done so. But when the Biden people found classified information in an office at the Biden Penn Center for Post-Administration Chinese-Communist-Party-Supported Boondoggles in Washington, we were informed, they immediately called the National Archives! Different!

Well, OK, that’s nice, only explain this: Why were said documents in a manila envelope labeled “Personal”? Classified information is, literally, the opposite of something that’s “personal.” Who wrote “personal” on them? Why were they in this office? We don’t know what they are, and we’re not supposed to know. But someone made the decision to hide them in an envelope marked with a misdirection. Trump faces prosecution because his behavior showed intent. Someone had intent here. Who? Why?

Compute! Compute!

Then it turns out that six weeks after the Archives were informed of these classified documents, Biden officials found some more—in his garage in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden was asked about this and said that, you know what else was in that garage? His Corvette. That answer either indicates that the president’s senility is no longer in question or that he has cleverly decided to deploy the concern that he is cognitively challenged, using the idea he’s senile as another form of misdirection.

Now, like Norman the robot trying to reconcile the paradox and failing, mainstream liberals began to shake and sputter.

Then it turned out that yet another document was found inside Biden’s Wilmington house—long after the documents were located inside Biden’s garage. That made three separate unsecure locations where American government secrets were stashed, knowingly or unknowingly.

Attorney General Merrick Garland revealed that the garage documents had been found on December 20, 2022—and yet their existence was not revealed when the first story came out in January about the “personal” manila folder at the Penn Biden Center for Giving Him an Office He Didn’t Have to Pay For Until He Decided to Run for President.

Garland also announced the appointment of a special counsel, just as he had two months earlier when it came to Trump’s handling of classified information. Compute, compute!

That was when, on CNN and MSNBC, the robotic anti-Trump, pro-Biden defenders began to emit smoke from their ears and shut down.

Don’t worry. They’ll be back. Norman the Robot came back, too.