I Recognized Something in Biden's Face

What I saw, and what’s happening in America while we argue: shutting down food inspections, deportation bonuses, and why we're paying to fly in one specific group of refugees

Let me tell you about my dad and President Biden. They never knew each other. Had my father lived, he probably wouldn’t have voted for him. But they share something in common.

My dad was a blue collar worker, laboring under the hot suns of summer and in the frigid winters of Minnesota, where I grew up. He served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, enduring multiple tours and witnessing things he never wanted to speak of again. Agent Orange rained down on 17-year-olds like my dad, as the US government sprayed 11 million gallons of the herbicide on the jungles of Vietnam.

Three hundred thousand Americans have now died from their exposures during the conflict. My dad was one of them, though he wasn’t killed by the series of strokes that began at age 41.

In his 50s, he started noticing stiffness in his joints. He chalked it up to arthritis. An uncharacteristic fatigue blanketed him, his boundless energy gone.

Over time, it became more obvious. The house fell silent. His once ubiquitous whistling and singing ended, his broad grins requiring Herculean effort to deploy. All of it was replaced by a frozen mask of unblinking sadness.

He no longer walked normally as his gait became shuffling, slow, and tentative. And his cognition declined, not in the stereotypical dementia commonly associated with advanced Alzheimer’s, but in a way that made it possible for him to be lucid one moment and forget someone’s face the next.

In other words, after watching Joe Biden’s debate performance in June 2024, many things looked very familiar to me and my family.