Take a look at the video below that I found on Twitter. It’s only 33 seconds long and is presented out of context but even if you try to take context into account, it’s still a very difficult watch. The video shows US president Joe Biden stepping back from a podium after a speech to some international organisation and quite clearly not knowing what to do next. Biden shuffles around seemingly unable to ascertain which direction to walk in and with a facial expression that screams ‘confusion’. He hangs around on the stage and moves about aimlessly rather than, as I’ve seen from other appearances from other US Presidents, swiftly go and join their aides or move to wherever else they are supposed to be.

Joe Biden looks like a man in trouble. When he’s devoid of guidance or a Teleprompter and is just up on a platform, he gives all the appearances of a man with some form of cognitive decline. The shuffling, the confusion, inability to understand where he’s supposed to be at any particular time, all seem familiar to any of us who have seen cognitive decline or similar conditions in the elderly.

When I look at Joe Biden I do not get the impression that here is a man whom I could have confidence in when it comes to having to take major decisions. Instead he looks like a man who says ‘yes’ to whatever is suggested to him by aides or staff. This is not a good look for the President of the United States of America.

We can all see the cognitive decline in Joe Biden and some of us would look at how this man is being exploited by the Democratic Party as something that could well be classified as elder abuse. The problem is that the obvious problems with Joe Biden’s health and mental capacity don’t seem to be being investigated, commented upon or spoken about by the mainstream left leaning US media or even similar media in the United Kingdom. The same sort of media who mocked the late Ronald Reagan over a mental decline that was not obvious to the public during his two terms in office, seem to say very little about the very much worse and much more public decline in mental condition shown by Joe Biden.

I despise Joe Biden and his politics. The man has a long history of blowing in the wind and jumping on bandwagons to enable him to stay in office. He’s also a plagiarist and has campaigned for laws that his own party and by extension Joe Biden now oppose. However despite my disaffection for the man and his politics I can’t help but feel sad viewing the Biden video above. Those of us who’ve seen friends and relatives disappear into the fog of cognitive decline recognise the signs and these signs are never good ones or ones that point to good outcomes. Some of those who are elderly manage to keep their cognitive abilities together right up until the end of life or shortly before it, but Joe Biden doesn’t seem to be one of these people. I’m all for having older people in public life as there is much to be said for the accumulation of wisdom over the years but what we have with Joe Biden is a man who has lived beyond the years of wisdom and is now declining rapidly.

Joe Biden, if not as a politician but as a human being, deserves better than to be abused as a tool to accomplish what the Democrat Party wants to do. Maybe America also deserves better than the sort of political class who would make use of an elderly and confused man to put a socially acceptable gloss on party policies that come not from the wise, but from the ignorant, the cynical and the stupid. It is difficult to in full conscience laugh at the spectacle that Joe Biden has become and instead I feel sadness at what he has become and angry at those who are exploiting him.  The Americans have landed themselves with a President whose public appearances appear to be cringey, bizarre and sad and because of that I fear for America’s future.