A petard is an archaic word for a bomb, before bombs were as big and destructive as they are today. The term “hoist by his own petard” means literally that some idiot blew himself up, kind of like this guy, except that in the classic example the bomb-wielder intends to damage something or someone else. The phrase is used to describe George Will’s condign justice,” meaning that a miscreant has reaped what he has sowed, received his just deserts, and “got what was coming to him,her, or it.”

In the future, when a nubbin asks, “Daddy, what does it mean to be ‘hoist by one’s own petard’?” the most vivid possible answer might be what is happening right now to the corrupt and Machiavellian Democratic Party and its corrupted allies. Exploding or soon to explode petards are everywhere.

An inventory (so far):

Petard #1: Determined to defeat Donald Trump by any means necessary, the motto of the radical, totalitarian Left, Democrats chose Joe Biden to be their Presidential nominee in 2020. They knew he was too old and already mentally fading; the latter was obvious. They knew that nobody but Joe himself and his family (predictably biased) thought Joe was Presidential timber even in the days when his IQ edged above 100. Never mind giving the American voters the best possible option; all that mattered was an easy win. Besides, Joe could be trusted not to try to be more than a one-term President. You can always trust frustrated, ambitious mediocrities to do the right thing when they are handed excessive power…

KABOOM!

Petard #2: seeking a running mate, Biden and his party decided that it was more important to grovel for approval from the Black Lives Matter cabal and the abortion-on-demand voting bloc than to choose a VP (to back up the oldest President ever who was already fraying badly around the edges) who could reasonably be expected to do the big job if it came to that. Kamala Harris had exposed herself as a fatuous empty power suit in the primary debates but never mind: she could be safely marginalized and ignored for four years, like Dan Quayle, Mike Pence and, well, Joe Biden.

KABOOM!

Petard #3: As Biden’s mental decline became increasingly apparent, the White House engaged in more and more elaborate cover-ups, relying on its Axis comrades in the mainstream media to parrot its falsehoods and deceive the public. The media complied, trusting their favorite party not to embarrass and expose them as the Soviet-style propaganda hacks they are at a time when the public’s trust was at a dangerous low. Biden became the media’s petard to contrast this White House’s honesty with Trump’s “lies.” Then Biden’s performance during the debate made the media’s complicity frighteningly obvious.

KABOOM!

Petard #4: The ill-starred debate was devised to show voters and the world that Joe Biden was fit as a fiddle and ready for love, or something, despite the fact that had been periodically incoherent when not supported by a teleprompter and sometimes even when he was. The ploy may have been a bluff to make Trump refuse to debate Biden so the Democrats could exploit that: the White House insisted on two Trump-Deranged moderators, with the debate hosted by a network, CNN, with a pro-Democrat and anti-Trump bias, and rules designed to hamstring the former President and protect the current one. Trump agreed anyway, calling the bluff. The rest is history.

KABOOM!

Petard #5: With Biden’s polls in free-fall (because he’s a lousy President, and few are fooled), the Democrats made sure that he did not face any challengers. The party didn’t allow any debates, and made it clear that any rebellious Democrat who dared to challenge Biden in a primary would become a pariah, which is what happened to Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips when he announced his candidacy. If the party had treated Senator Eugene McCarthy (also from Minnesota) this way in 1967, LBJ might never have dropped out of the race. But Democrats believed in democracy then. In poll after poll, Democratic voters told the current party they wanted someone other than Biden to run, but since there were no options in the primaries because there was no way for a challenger to get publicity, Joe “won” all the primaries and delegates.

KABOOM!

Petard #6: The Democrats and the news media spent the last eight years declaring Donald Trump to be some kind of mutant combination of Darth Vader, Adolf Hitler and Voldemort. Since his return to the White House obviously meant the end of democracy and quite possibly life as we know it, their ridiculous fearmongering meant that literally anyone and anything would be a safer alternative as a leader than this monster, including a senile old man who had trouble squeezing out coherent sentences in a televised debate he had prepped for days. Or a lawn chair. Or a Galapagos Tortoise. That made the senile old man’s claim that only he could defeat Trump seem reasonable to the Trump Deranged which the party and media had deliberately created, when it is, in fact, irresponsible and insane.

KABOOM!

Petard #7: The Democrats have increasingly forfeited all integrity to pander to the Congressional Black Caucus, a single issue bloc that cares only about political (and financial) advantages for its all-progressive, mostly racist, disturbingly incompetent and corrupt members. In the debate-fueled crisis, members of the Caucus have issued the most obviously absurd defenses of Biden—he was over-prepared, he just had a ‘bad night,” one bad debate doesn’t cancel out four wonderful years, Maxine Water’s typically astute, ‘Hey, I’m older than he is, and I’m not senile!’ logic, and worse. Now the CBC has announced that it is unanimously behind Joe as the candidate (because a rutabaga that automatically does the group’s bidding is a preferable President to a clear-thinking POTUS who prefers to what is in the best interests of the American public as whole.

KABOOM!

Petard #8: As part of his grovel to the DEI mania in his party, Biden appointed a “historic” press secretary who almost immediately proved that she was neither rhetorically nimble enough, nor intelligent enough, nor even a sufficiently skilled liar to do her job. Of course, like so many of Biden’s high-level appointments devoid of merit but teeming with color, Karine Jean-Pierre couldn’t be fired, and now, when a skilled paid liar is crucial if the White House is going to safely pick its way through the wreckage of those other exploded petards, Jean-Pierre is worse than useless. Yesterday, she ended up in an argument with members of press corps who were legitimately curious about why a Parkinson’s specialist had made multiple visits to the White House. She was alternately evasive and combative, which, as a crisis management specialist noted today on CNN, only increases distrust and suspicion. On Fox News, former Bush paid liar-turned news host Dana Perino guessed that Karine hadn’t been told about the visits to give her plausible deniability. “Always a bad idea,” Perino said. But if the information was withheld from Jean-Pierre, it was because the White House didn’t think she was capable of handling questions about it since, after all, she’s an idiot, albeit a historic one.

KABOOM!

Incredibly, there are still more petards looming and ticking, but this array is sufficient to make the point. Frequently, though not always, unethical schemes aimed at short-sighted goals have a tendency to explode as unexpected consequences proliferate. Being ethical for the sake of doing the right thing is the ethical reason not to lie, cheat and steal, but the fact that these methods also have a tendency to backfire on their users should serve a deterrent.