Past is prelude to the chaos of the Trump years and the driving into the ditch by, as Joe Biden declared to one and all, the “adults are back in charge and the competence is breathtaking.”

That statement followed the 2020 defeat of Donald Trump, bringing four years of tweets, petulance, bravado and misstatements to a close (as President, that is). What preceded that defeat was a remarkable reversal in energy prices and domestic supply, a healthy and growing economy, a drawdown in troops committed to Afghanistan, withdrawal from the laughable Paris climate accords (while meeting the goals and the only major nation to do so!), launching a greatly improved trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, strong-arming Iran, unconventional diplomacy with Putin, Xi and Kim, challenging NATO and the UN, building a border wall that stemmed the flood of illegals, drug traffickers and terrorists from all corners of the Earth.

Perhaps his greatest feat, widely unacknowledged and unsung, is short-circuiting the relentless push and probing by Rogue States. His faux “friendship and respect” for Chairman Xi kept the Mao wannabe off balance. The Hong Kong crackdown could wait until Trump’s exit. Likewise, Trump’s stated respect for Putin and his meetings with North Korea’s Kim slowed their advances. It is crucial to note none of these, nor Iran, advanced during his term. And, under his administration’s direction, ISIS was defanged.

A rabidly hostile press, interference from the FBI, dirty tricks by his opponent via the Steele dossier, and a myriad of other hurdles — including a pandemic with which he dealt expeditiously — did not block his achievements. Only Donald Trump could defeat Donald Trump.

The antagonism ratcheted upward with the circuses surrounding the three new justices nominated to Supreme Court in a circus-like atmosphere with President Trump acting as sideshow barker.

The smirking, the name-calling, the hubris, the off-the-charts narcissism, the incendiary tweets, and total self-absorption so repulsed the nation that it turned to an upward failing hair-sniffer, woman toucher, glad-hander and blowhard, Joseph Biden. A man who Barack Obama said, “Don’t ever underestimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up.” This is also the man who whispered in surprise to Obama upon the passage of Obamacare “This is a big f****** deal!” Surprise!

Election Day, 2020 — Let the debacle begin…

As we are learning every day, events surrounding and involving President Trump up to President Biden’s inauguration were an ignominious and violent end to the tumult of the Trump presidency. His defeat and claims of a stolen election — plus the horrors of January 6 — dilute, nearly negate, his administration’s accomplishments. Sadly those are greatly outweighed by the harm done, the divisiveness, erosion of simple civility, ginned up racial tension, moves to defund police, the Occupy movement and two impeachments.

While those will never be considered salad days, what followed, beginning with the Biden first day in office would set the country on a course Rogue States would relish. The hardbitten leadership in Tehran, Beijing, Moscow and elsewhere took note of the Biden template: form over substance, green doodling, vague rallying cries backed by nothing, a Cabinet of virtue signaling, a border wide open — the U.S. was ripe for aggressive encroachment.

Ceding the U.S. advantage in energy markets empowered Iran and Russia. The litany of missteps is too long to detail here. They are self-evident. What truly stands out is the across-the-board incompetence in virtually every facet of the Biden Administration. The vice president is unable to unscramble even the simplest concepts. The former press secretary was a snide petulant voice the public heard every day. The current voice is one of platitudes and incapability or unwillingness to respond.

The two-pronged disaster that is climate change policy and energy policy illustrates the feckless, clueless insiders directing the President. By calling the gas price spike “Putin’s tax increase” he shoots himself in the foot twice. Once by voicing a bald lie as prices rose dramatically before Putin invaded Ukraine. Twice by empowering Putin and boosting his standing in Russia.

Biden was in Washington during the Carter energy faux pas. Oil price controls were imposed by President Nixon and Carter and his Energy Secretary James Schlesinger embraced them. “There is a dwindling supply of energy resources. The prices are going to rise in the future no matter who is President…”

Newly elected President Reagan issued an executive order ending oil price controls. Within four months the price of unleaded gasoline fell from $1.41 to $.86 per gallon. Refinery cost for a barrel of crude fell from more than $30 per barrel in 1980 to less than half that in 1986. Instead of running out oil, proven crude reserves were up 41 percent at the end of the 1980s from the beginning of the decade.

Joe Biden arrived in Washington, DC in 1972, at 29 the sixth-youngest senator in American history. He lived through the Carter energy policy disaster, the rise in crude reserves, the drop in oil prices, the economic boom of the Clinton years and the dotcom bust. He was in the Senate on 9/11 and knew that event was masterminded by Saudi nationals. He was Vice President during the fiscally moribund Obama presidency. He was in the inner circle of an administration that did all it could to regulate fossil fuel industries out of existence resulting in record commodity prices.

He then was out of office for four years of the Trump energy triumph. The US became a next exporter of petroleum products and was energy self sufficient. He had a front row seat when Paul Ehrlich testified that Earth was doomed to starvation. Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb begins, “The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

Today the drum majors in the climate panic parade are the failed presidential candidate Albert Gore, Jr. and a tantrum-prone Swedish schoolgirl, Greta Thunberg. Not to be outdone, the latter day Ozymandias of climate change, Special Envoy John Kerry, proclaims in somber tones of deep gravitas, there is perhaps a decade, perhaps less, to enact draconian measures in service of saving the planet. The doomsayers have declared the debate over. Meanwhile China, India and others give lip service to limiting emissions while they build coal-fired plants at breakneck speed — several months ago www.newscientist.com reported 176 gigawatts of coal capacity was under construction in China. That’s more than half the world’s new coal power. India is moderating its coal capacity according to the International Energy Agency — declining to 34 percent of power generation by 2040 from 68 percent in 2020. Looks like ten years out it will be too late…or will it. The ashheap of history awaits the failed presidential candidates and Miss Thunberg.

Meanwhile the American public suffers through record inflation and the energy market Mr. Biden said he wanted. Jennifer Granholm as Energy Secretary joins a long line of political hacks who have peopled that office. Former Rep. Deb Haaland as Secretary of Interior is a willing collaborator in the scheme to make American energy production more costly, thereby making green alternatives more attractive. Lease sale cancellations, pipeline cancellations, threats of a windfall profits tax, sales of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve harken back to errors of previous administrations, administrations in which Mr. Biden was either elected or supported as a senator.

The overarching problem is that such foolishness is played out on the public stage for all to see. Russia is emboldened by Biden’s absence of resolve and focus. China buys oil from Russia at sky high prices thereby funding the invasion of Ukraine. China also correctly perceives opportunity to advance its long game by pushing counterfeit drugs across a wide open southern border and poisoning the US populace.

For another two plus years the US will be saddled with a clueless administration peopled with the likes of Kamala Harris, Ron Klain, Anthony Blinken, Anthony Fauci, Janet Yellen, Merrick Garland, Granholm, Haaland and the endless parade of horribles Biden has assembled. But the public knew what it was getting — an impetuous reactionary who upbraids the border patrol, calls for prosecution of “racists” that are no such thing and perhaps worst — a man incapable of controlling his speech and physical movements. All of it in plain view, including declarations that he will run again. The energy markets he sought have arrived as he promised. Another promise he kept was to unite the American people. He has done so. The majority of Americans agree they do not wish for a second Biden term.

A final thought from H.L. Mencken: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”