By John F. Di Leo, Opinion Contributor
Growing up in Chicagoland in the 40s and 50s, children quickly became familiar with the differences between face brick and common brick. Back in the days before aluminum siding, builders might spend the money for fine face brick on the front side only, so the house looks good from the street, then use common brick – the cheaper, less attractive variety – for the sides and back of the house.
Similarly, by the 60s and 70s, the suburbs filled up with a newer way to save money: builders would use face brick on the front, then aluminum siding on the sides and back. Or in other varieties on the same theme, the first floor might be brick, and the second floor would be siding.
There’s nothing wrong with any of the above; they still did the job, holding the house together and looking good from the street.
Commercial buildings have long taken this concept even further. For centuries, we have seen business districts in which the buildings looked two stories tall, or even three, when in fact they were just a single story, and that upper portion of the front wall was just a “false front,” a high flat front wall above the first floor, serving only to make the shop look bigger, making room for a big sign like “Smith’s Dry Goods.”
We’ve all seen this trick in small towns across the Midwest; we especially notice it in western towns in the movies. It fools you from the front; only when you look at it from the side did you realize how fake it is. These are still real buildings, mind you; they do their job, but there’s really just less to them, architecturally, than meets the eye.
Now, I told you that so I could tell you this:
There’s also an extreme version. The Hollywood soundstage.
Think of the classic Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder western parody: “Blazing Saddles.”
Rock Ridge is a small one-street town with strips of one-story buildings that have two-story false fronts.
We all know the plot; corrupt Attorney General Hedley Lamarr, a character lifted almost directly from Illinois machine politics and dropped into the middle of a movie set, attempts to drive out the people of Rock Ridge with a band of villains. But the townsfolk are onto them, and to deceive the attackers in the big riot scene, they build a fake town with no buildings at all, nothing but false fronts, propped up by lumber bracework, on both sides of the street. Absolutely fake from beginning to end.
Just false fronts, with nothing behind them.
Now, fast forward to the present.
On September 5, 2023, America’s Pretender-in-Chief strolled off stage right in the middle of a Medal of Honor ceremony.
He smiled and walked right into the crowd and out the door, to the bewilderment of staff and guests, leaving the honoree all alone on the stage, clearly ashamed of what has happened to the country he served so courageously, so long ago.
As he walked off the stage, the cameras focused on the beady eyes of this wayward soul, this utterly lost excuse for a president. This video is just one of many, but it serves as perfect proof – as if we needed more – that Joe Biden is completely gone, that his mind is so addled, he can no longer perform even the most basic elements of his job.
Nota Bene: It shouldn’t be up to the Republicans to impeach the man. Joe Biden’s own party should be gently directing him and his family that it’s already past time to leave the stage, both literally and figuratively. It’s time for him to step down for good. You would think they’d want to, not just for the good of their party and their elective prospects, but out of pride.
So why doesn’t the Democratic Party make him step back? Why doesn’t his cabinet, his family, his appointees both civilian and military? Why don’t they get together and convincingly direct him to resign?
There’s really only one answer, you know. Nobody wants to admit it, but there’s only one answer.
It’s because to the people in charge, it really doesn’t matter. Joe Biden is not so much a puppet as a completely fake placeholder, even less than a figurehead.
A puppet would look good.
A puppet would be entertaining. He’d speak when told to; he’d shut up when told to; he’d stand up and sit down when he was supposed to. With someone pulling his strings, a puppet would behave.
Joe Biden can’t do any of that. Joe Biden is such a disaster, he’s even failing as a puppet.
But he’s fine as a false front. A head of state in name only.
Most observers have assumed all along that the real power in this administration is held by some apparent underlings. A White House Chief of Staff, perhaps, or a couple of prominent cabinet secretaries or even undersecretaries.
But it’s also possible that the powers that control this regime may not be officeholders at all, and that’s why they don’t care how much of a failure he is as a puppet.
Who might really be giving orders behind the scenes? Barack Obama, Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett, perhaps? Or John Kerry and his well-financed climate alarmist crowd? Perhaps Merrick Garland’s secret police operation? The party bosses down the street at the Democratic National Committee?
It could be Senate Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Or maybe even someone much, much farther away like George Soros and his non-governmental organizations?
Or even the corrupt leadership of our enemy nations – China and Ukraine in particular, which had to have some reason to pour so much money into the Biden family coffers over the years.
It’s not clear who’s running this administration, but it’s certainly not Joe Biden.
If there are ever any real historians in the future, they will have a lot of conflicting evidence to study; there’s no telling what they’ll find.
The one thing that’s certain is that Joseph Robinette Biden – longtime Senator and Vice President – is not running anything at all today. This alleged President is nothing but a false front, and everything from a good gust of wind to an honest camera angle reveals daily the amateurish sham of this fake administration.
Copyright 2023 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance trainer and transportation manager, writer, and actor. A one-time county chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party, he has been writing regularly for Illinois Review since 2009. Follow John F. Di Leo on Facebook, Twitter, Gettr or TruthSocial.
A collection of John’s Illinois Review articles about vote fraud, The Tales of Little Pavel, and his 2021 political satires about current events, Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes One and Two, are available, in either paperback or eBook, only on Amazon.
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