Trump was a lying liar and Biden was a hoarse doddering old man who got lost mid sentence.
On MSNBC, Joy Reid pointed out that Americans want their president to be an avatar. They want a commander who looks strong and tough, and we saw that when the populace couldn’t get behind Al Gore (who she credited as being a great mind) who acted more like a policy wank than Bush, who felt more like a (New England) cowboy.
Earlier in the week, I caught a bit of Steve Bannon’s radio show where he railed about how we need to eliminate the deep state – the Praetorian Guard – that indicted Trump and props up Biden. At the time, I wondered who this Praetorian Guard was supposed to have assassinated, who was bribing them, and which combat actions they’d fought in. If nothing else, I think this debate proves there is no deep state/Praetorian Guard because they’d have assassinated Biden last week during his preparation rather than let him get on stage.
Look, in any large enough group, there are going to be some incompetent people and some competent bad actors. We have to vote for the people who will admit to that and get rid of them. The U.S. is going to have to choose between a leader who tries to install good people to run the government and one who intends to install people bent on dismantling the government and giving loyalty to the leader alone. Even IN the debate, Trump asked Biden, “Who did you fire?” – that you have to fire bad people … but this was in reference to firing the General who claimed to have heard Trump call veterans “suckers and losers”. I can’t prove Trump did or didn’t say that, but I do remember Trump skipping the memorial ceremony.
Trump said Charlottesville never happened. I remember it. Trump said Nancy Pelosi admitted responsibility for January 6th. She did not. Trump said the ex-governor of Virginia was not just for late term abortion, but infanticide. He is not. His lies were too numerous to count.
Biden lost track of his thoughts early on and blurted out “We finally beat Medicare.” Trump said, “He did beat Medicare and he beat it to death.” Biden said Trump had sex with a porn star while (uh, uhm stumble) his wife was pregnant. Trump asserted he did not. Biden called Trump a criminal. Trump said Biden would be the criminal when his term was over (not exact words).
It wasn’t good in any direction. It was ugly. Through it, though, Trump maintained his TV-personality persona while Biden generally looked infirm.
Personally, I want a deep state that does things like: build roads, enforce food labeling laws so that the box accurately reflects the food inside, eventually hires enough judges to have a fast turn-around time for family court and the like. It should be really hard to fire them when they are speaking the truth as the understand it and easy to fire them if they are distorting the truth. Alas, I worry that Joy Reid is correct and the U.S. will vote for the guy they think is most like John Wayne.
Not the person you were replying to, but the “doom” spouter here. I realize you are 100% right that my post might make people less inspired to vote. I’m sorry for that. I was very distressed at the time. My intent was to emphasize that: while a rational person might complain about either candidate, one is substantially worse and we MUST vote in favor of democracy when the other choice (and his advisors) are openly saying they want to dismantle the institutional expertise that understand how stuff works (which materials are suitable for building roads on various substructures, or where groundwater migrates and how to prevent contamination, and yes, how to figure out how a virus works). They call these people “the deep state”, which minimizes the reason we want them to keep their apolitical jobs. Of course the experts – like everyone --will likely have political opinions, but that doesn’t mean they are partisan. As long as they look at data and derive truthful results regardless of their personal politics, it doesn’t matter. Obviously we should fire those who can’t do their job or hide/ignore/promote information such that their results are distorted to favor a personal agenda (also knowing that some data SHOULD be rejected if acquired by dubious means, isn’t reproduced in other trials, etc.).
Anyway, I apologize for the negativity. Thank you for calling me out! :-)