American apathy over the misfortune of the political class
And how it is more of an indictment of politicians than it is of the population itself
US media is in overdrive making sure you feel extra sorry for a man who spent his career writing racist crime bills, supporting wars, and funding a genocide.
Whitewashing the legacies of war criminals is their job, and Joe Biden is no exception.
George Bush spent eight years as president greenlighting torture and overseeing a brutal invasion of Iraq, which was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
After leaving office, he spent his time dancing with Ellen and painting pictures of dogs.
Barack Obama spent eight years as president targeting government whistleblowers, forcefeeding inmates at Guantanamo, covering up Bush era torture, toppling Libya, and bombing weddings and funerals.
He spent his post presidency years skydiving and giving paid speeches.
Donald Trump's first term was spent bombing Syria, Iraq, and Somalia, dropping a MOAB on Afghanistan, assassinating Iranian leaders, tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, supplying javelin missiles to Ukraine, and attempting a coup in Venezuela.
During his second term, he has continued funding Biden's genocide in Gaza, along with an ever growing list of many other awful things.
In time, Trump's legacy - like Biden's - will almost certainly be whitewashed. US media networks will work hard to make sure of it, almost as if to convince Americans that they shouldn't feel disdain or apathy when misfortune finds a politician. But why would Americans feel this in the first place?
Perhaps because presidents from both major parties have made it very clear over the years that they don't really care about their constituents. Perhaps because, every four years, they make promises they never keep, while conditions for the lives of everyday Americans continues deteriorating in real time.
Perhaps it's because Americans know these criminals will never visit the inside of a court room and suffer any reprecussions for their atrocities: Trump, Biden, Obama, Bush - not one of them will ever be held accountable for wrongdoing. Presidents are above the law. They can bomb, they can kill, they can lie, and they can walk away afterwards with no consequences.
Maybe, just maybe, for millions of Americans who have been repeatedly lied to, hurt, and abused by the political class over the years, the only justice they will ever witness for this tiny group of political parasites is something as awful as a cancer diagnosis.
Normally, this isn't something to celebrate.
But there is also nothing normal about a society that allows a senile old man to fund a genocide. There is nothing normal about a society that lets a reality TV host reach a position of power and continue to fund that genocide. There is nothing normal about a society that gives a free pass to men like George Bush and Barack Obama - and even honors them - all while overlooking the massive amounts of harm they caused at home and abroad during their time in office.
It speaks volumes that millions of Americans celebrate, or at best, simply don't care, when otherwise unfortunate events find their way into the lives of politicians. But it says more about the political class, and the resentment they've rightly accumulated from the population, than it does about the population itself.