ICYMI - Patti Davis on what everyone is missing about Hunter Biden's case

[babylonsister]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/12/2246237/-ICYMI-Patti-Davis-on-what-everyone-is-missing-about-Hunter-Biden-s-case

ICYMI - Patti Davis on what everyone is missing about Hunter Biden's case
Wednesday, June 12, 2024 at 8:17:13a EDT

Patricia Ann Davis (née Reagan; born October 21, 1952) is an American actress and author. She is the daughter of U.S. president Ronald Reagan and his second wife, Nancy Reagan.

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...Hunter Biden’s legal case is, at its root, a story about the toxic, careless choices made by a drug addict. It’s about the fact that addicts weave tragedy into their own lives and into the lives of those around them. Addicts don’t think about other people; they think about themselves. And they lie — that’s how they supply their addiction.

I was addicted to amphetamines from the time I was a teenager into my early 20s. Preferring prescription amphetamines to tablets of methamphetamine punched out in someone’s garage (although I took those, too), I went into doctors’ offices and spun out lie after lie. When my fondness for speed led me to cocaine, I got behind the wheel of my car and drove home some nights up a winding, treacherous canyon road thinking nothing of the fact that I might kill someone on that road, including myself.

Some observers argue that if Hunter Biden were not the president’s son, he wouldn’t be on trial for buying a gun while being addicted to drugs, since he had the gun for only 11 days and it wasn’t used in any crime. I’m not a legal expert. I’m not qualified to weigh in on that. But as the daughter of first a governor and then a president, I do know what it’s like to live under a glaring, unforgiving spotlight that never dims. The choices you make in your life, the mistakes, the stumbles, are preserved forever and sometimes tossed out in front of you like a minefield you have to keep crossing. Hunter Biden has had to sit in court listening to his ex-wife and his ex-lovers testify about the messiness and insanity of his drug addiction. I’m going to hazard a guess here and say that they probably described things that he doesn’t even remember. He had to watch his daughter take the stand and testify, something that’s intimidating, even frightening, under any circumstances. And whatever the surrounding political circumstances, ultimately he has to know that he is responsible for all of it.

And…

...It might sound naïve in these scathingly partisan times, but it would be nice if the rest of us — or even most of us — could look at how sad this story is. How a man with a loving, supportive family and every advantage and opportunity still fell into the roiling abyss of drug addiction and couldn’t stop swimming around in its dark waters. How even though he has worked hard on getting and staying clean, his past mistakes and sins follow him, collide with him and demand to be addressed. They are still today racking up collateral damage, causing tremendous pain to those he loves and who love him, even potentially endangering his father’s legacy.

If there is anything lacking in American politics these days, it’s anything resembling grace. How the Bidens are responding to these travails is an example of grace under pressure. Thanks to Davis for providing some needed perspective.