The reality is the Russians are where they are. They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they're in a situation where the world is changing before them and they're clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable.
Nobody really disagrees with this. Dan Drezner writes:
If Biden was just shooting the breeze off the record, I'd be hard-pressed to disagree with anything in the quotes.
Ah, but Drezner continues:
The word "stupid" has been thrown around a lot this week, but I think it applies pretty well to Biden's language.
Andrew Sullivan goes even further:
The sad truth is: Biden cannot shut up. But his job as veep requires him to shut up. Dan is right: on the merits, Biden isn't wrong here. Just completely unprofessional and unable to maintain the discipline to perform his job without constantly undermining his boss. I'd say someone needs to tell him to shut up. But it hasn't worked for the last thirty years of his bloviation. So why would it work now?
I've been steadfast in my opinion that Biden is a fucking idiot. That's not so much my concern. The problem arises because Biden wants to show everybody how fucking smart he is. He's got an intelligence Napoleon complex. Part of me thinks it's because he went to good, but not great schools -- University of Delaware and then Syracuse for his JD. So, to compensate he states what is obvious to everybody who looks at an issue or crazy shit that nobody thinks is a good idea, smiles, and a tingle of look how-much-fucking-smarter-I-am-than-you-rubes goes up his thigh. It's the odd amalgam of misplaced intellectual hubris that overcompensates for his deeper feelings of intellectual insecurity that is the most disconcerting. It results in a vice president compelled to say stupid shit despite all pressure for him to shut the fuck up.
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I don't think it has anything to do with what schools he attended, so much as his performance at them. He was an undistinguished student in high school and graduated 506th out of 688 at Delaware. He graduated 76th out of 85 from Syracuse Law. Moreover, he was a stutterer throughout childhood and into his twenties. He was apparently a lazy student who continually crammed at the last minute to pass his classes. Such people often have inferiority complexes. Afraid that they won't be top of the class if they try, they instead put in less effort so they can boast about how they passed with so little effort.
I don't think there are very many people who attend Syracuse who suffer from inferiority complexes because they didn't go to Harvard, particularly if they had a dominating academic performance at Syracuse. (People who went to Harvard seem to think this is a common inferiority complex, but it really isn't.)
Your explanation definitely makes snese.. Either way he has a serious complex.
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