Joe Biden’s Universe–Taking Credit For The Big Bang

“Today is a historic day,” President Joe Biden told reporters Monday referring to the latest deep space pictures from the Webb space telescope. “It shows what we can achieve… These images are going to remind the world that America can do big things and remind the American people – especially our children – that there's nothing beyond our capacity. We can see possibilities no one has ever seen before. We can go places no one has ever gone before."

No one really expected the President to reflect on the metaphysical importance of the creation of the universe, for that would have involved God, the persistent conundrum of something out of nothing, and the meaning of it all.  He would have had to wade into unfamiliar waters.

Not long ago scientists at Harvard reported that they had observed gravitational waves consistent with the Big Bang Theory.  If the universe started with a massive explosion sending matter and energy out in all directions, then these waves would be the ‘smoking gun’ that scientists have looked for since Alan Guth predicted them 35 years ago.

These waves, however, are not just clear evidence that the Big Bang happened, but explain why it happened – how something could be created out of nothing. The New York Times reported:

Guth discovered what might have made the universe bang to begin with. A potential hitch in the presumed course of cosmic evolution could have infused space itself with a special energy that exerted a repulsive force, causing the universe to swell faster than the speed of light for a prodigiously violent instant.

When asked about the conjuncture of the two discoveries – his own recent images of the universe just 600 million years after the Big Bang and the Big Bang itself – all he could remember was the quote about ‘a repulsive force’ and he could never quite get beyond what he had learned about repulsive people. 

There are some very repulsive people in our diocese”, said Father Murphy at the St. Joan de Chantal Church of the Resurrection in Wilmington, “even though we don’t want to admit it”.  These, the priest went on, were reprobates, Jesus naysayers, morally corrupt parishioners who had the audacity to sit resolutely in the pews nearest the altar.

Every Sunday he looked them in the eye and drawing from the Bible, called them out as latter day money changers, scurrilous deniers and betrayers of Christ, and moral profligates worse than the worst tempting sirens of the Old Testament.

Joe had always remembered these homilies and had taken to heart the idea of repulsive people.  Of course later on in his political career, he found he had to be much more temperate in his language.  Those whom the good father would have found repulsive – dysfunctional, rude, claimants to blackness; disingenuous transgender opportunists; abortionists and their shills; and a hundred other deniers of moral principle – were now to be embraced.  They were legitimate voices of the oppressed, the marginalized, and the woe-begotten.

“Not exactly, Mr. President”, said Joe’s principal science adviser. “This repulsive force has to do with converse energy flows, cycles of cosmic perturbation and prodigiousness”.

The President beamed his famous winning smile, totally lost in these weird notions, thanked the science advisor for clarification, and went on to talk about the great achievement of his administration, the pictures of his young universe.

In fact, the President was truly smitten by the Webb pictures, for he had grown up on the adventures of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.  He had wanted to be Tom and travel to the far reaches of the solar system, fighting aliens and forces of evil; and when he said that ‘we can now go places we have never been before’, he was referring to Tom’s intergalactic travels.

The speech writer who had written this bit of political treacle was only doing his job, spinning the Webb business into kudos for the President who had no more to do with the telescope or its images than the man in the moon.

The conservative press had a field day with these nonsensical ideas; and one in particular which had picked up on Biden’s Tom Corbett link, showed cartoon images of every one of his Administration in full 50s space regalia, headed off into the unknown led by the Transportation Secretary, followed by Kamala Harris, Space Cadet in Chief, trailed by Biden’s diverse crowd of sexual wonders, racial wannabees, and, best of all, illegal aliens headed into an unknown deep space refuge.

That night, Joe was still high on the Webb pix.  He had been brought back to the glory days of his childhood fantasies, lazy summer afternoons reading stacks of comic books, watching the clouds over Rehoboth, listening to his mother washing up in the kitchen.  An idyll, and a presage of things to come.

“Can you imagine it, Jill?”, he said next to her in bed in the Presidential Suite.  “Some day an American will be there among the stars”.   His eyes were dreamy with nostalgia and with expectation, “and I will be the one who will send him…or her”, he quickly added.

Jill smiled and humored him.  She was by now used to her husband’s meanderings, paid little attention to them despite the President’s handlers who tightly scripted every public appearance.  “It’s just Joe being Joe”, she told them. “A man of dreams, hopes, and faith”.

“I want more pictures from Webb”, the President said.  “Can we hone in on the bright star in the middle? That one is saying something”.

No, said his science advisor, that’s it, hard enough to get what we did, amazing actually; but the President was having none of it, and in his most genteel, smiling way, asked nicely but more insistently. “It’s for the American people”, he added.

And so it went.  That little speck of space became his, and his speechwriter worked overtime to keep up with the President’s unusually frequent public appearances.  Now this made all the back seat Obama years, all that time scrounging for more money for Delaware, and the ups and downs of running the country worth it.  “Finally”, the President said, although because he said this to no one in particular and the reference was deeply internal, it only raised quizzical eyebrows.

“What a great country”, said the President, now sure that he would be reelected, his legacy complete.