ROGER KIMBALL: Afghanistan and the Cost of Having a ‘Normal’ President.

Consider this a letter of congratulations. I address it to Democrats everywhere who told us that Joe Biden would return the United States to a state of normality.

I address it also to those, many putative Republicans as well as Democrats, who fought tooth-and-nail against Donald Trump because—well, because he was not a “normal” politician.

Donald Trump issued mean tweets. He made fun of the media, often singling out reporters by name.

He was bombastic (more bombastic than President Joe Biden?).

He lied (again, did he lie more often than Biden?).

No thoughtful person believed there was anything to the fabricated gossip about Russian collusion in determining the 2016 election—which does not, of course, mean that that tissue of grotesque lies was not believed and assiduously circulated by many Big Names in the media.

Nor did it insulate Trump from being compared to virtually every tyrant in history (“literary Hitler,” remember?).

There is now a lot of hand-wringing about the performance of Joe Biden. I’ll give you a little then vs. now in a moment.

First, I want to raise the question of whether the people who helped put Joe Biden in office should have their hand-wringing licenses suspended.

There are several putatively conservative outlets—those that deserve Bill Kristol’s “elevated conservative” seal of approval—who worked overtime to disparage Trump.

They bought wholesale into the Jan.-6-riot-is-an-insurrection-threatening-“our-democracy” meme.

That is all looking as rancid as the Russian collusion delusion, but I haven’t heard any apologies.

Instead, we are treated to high-minded (by which I do not mean “intelligent”) analysis of Biden’s faults, blunders, mistakes.

I do wonder whether such people, who helped put Biden in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue deserve to be heard on the question of his liabilities.

I offer that for future consideration: should those who helped put Biden in office now deserve a hearing when they are complaining about his performance?

I confess that I do not listen to them.

Nor should you. They’re putzes.