The best move now for Joe Biden is to just turn down the upcoming debate with the insane orange maggot, Trump. The take of most of the sharpest pundits - including Steve Schmidt and David Plouffe - is that Biden gains nothing, nada by accepting a Thursday debate with this screw loose maniac. Indeed, in terms of need, Dotard needs this event about 1,000 times more than Biden given he is behind in the polls - including in battleground states.
As I said before, these debates offer nothing more anyway. We already saw that from the first debate and Trump's batshit nuts lie fest Town Hall. What more is there to find out? Most of the people that would have watched saw the first, a total fucking fiasco, would want no part of any further shit shows. We know Trump will be desperate, try to knock Biden off his game and that means 90 minutes of screaming like a madman on PCP, interrupting incessantly and nonstop lies and bullshit. In other words, basically a repeat of his earlier (Sept. 29) performance. Biden doesn't need it, and the American people who still need to make up their minds - don't either. (Besides which, anyone who hasn't made up his or her mind by now needs more therapeutic intervention than I can provide.)
Why on god's green earth give this deranged cretin a national forum, on network TV (NBC), to spout 4 or 5 dozen more of his lies as he runs roughshod over the next moderator (Kristen Welker) as well as Biden? We know already that many of the same 'greatest hits' spouted at his super spreader events will also be regurgitated at any new debate. These include:
- The "cure" is just around the corner.
- Masks don't work, they just given people Covid
- We have the "greatest economy in the world"
- "I will deliver a recovery while Biden will give you a Depression."
- "We're always protecting those with pre-existing conditions, don't worry!"
“If he wins, the radical left will be running the country and they’re addicted to power and God help us if they ever got it, because we would never have the same country again.”
“If he wins, there will be nothing but bedlam all over the place.”
“If Biden wins, China wins, all these other countries win.”
“If Biden wins, your borders are gone, which means your health care is gone, the middle class is gone, and your safety is gone.”
Why dignify such malignant lies and deliberately provide a forum for this mind rot and disinformation to be circulated? Why put yourself in the same position of being a decent and normal candidate- recast again as an unwilling and impotent hostage to another Trump stream of lies and bombast? There is no reason for it.
If some excuse needs to be proffered for rejecting a debate with a crackpot crank and traitor criminal there are many to choose from. Biden can propose a prerequisite that Trump can't meet: like two negative Covid tests in a row - with proof of each delivered to the Debate Commission and NBC. We know to a near certainty Trump won't agree so that will likely be that. No debate. Good riddance!
Another prerequisite is to demand "mic" control by the moderator, for any Trump interruptions. He misbehaves then pull his sound. If Trump refuses that, then no debate.
We know all that Trump will deliver is lies, and those mixed with bombast and name -calling, so what's the point of a repeat engagement? We know there will be no educational aspect whatsoever, and recent history discloses that has become ever more evident. As journalist Elizabeth Drew - a panelist in one 1976 debate- put it:
"The debates have never made sense as a test for presidential leadership."
They make a hundred times less sense now, given a creature like Donald Trump who lies as easily as he breathes and treats any broadcast as a new opportunity to pump up his forlorn base in a kind of quasi extended advert.
But there is another more sinister aspect we need people to be aware of, noted in Bob Woodward's book RAGE (p.258). This is where we learn - thanks to a Jared Kushner book recommendation ('Win Bigly - Persuasion In A World Where Facts Don't Matter') that there is a method to Trump's lying madness. Thus "Trump's misstatements of fact are not regrettable errors or ethical lapses but part of a technique called intentional wrongness persuasion."
Thus, Trump "can invent any reality for most voters on most issues" and "all you will remember is that he provided his reasons, he didn't apologize and opponents called him a liar." An example highlighted by Kushner was Trump's repeated statement (p. 259) that: "Our economy is the best it's ever been." The constant repetition of this lie - as well as others - means Trump's messages get through while the media's and other critics' corrections don't because "too much time is spent on hair splitting, fact-checking analysis." With millions already exposed to the lies tuning out.
Knowing how Trump's lying constitutes a definite strategy to change people's minds means a greater onus on Biden to pass on this so-called debate Thursday night. It makes him culpable if he helps provide yet another stage for Trumpian "persuasion" via "intentional wrongness". It also means he risks losing voters - even if a percentage point or two - but which could be huge in a battleground state, like Pennsylvania.
We've already seen Trump fail the essential test for presidential leadership in his woeful and incompetent response to the pandemic. In the past week alone, including at the NBC Town Hall, he's spread misinformation about the virus, undercut the nation's leading experts on infectious diseases, and continued his practice of shunning masks - which has now leaked into his zombie hordes. ("Hey! The president didn't wear no mask and survived the virus, so we can too!") All this as the nation is now hitting 60,000 cases day
We don't need any more staged, artificial tests like these "debates" which have mutated into 90 minute Trump tirades any way. This is now Biden's election to lose, and if he were daft enough to agree to face off again with this hyper Turd Trump on Thursday, he just might. The smart move, the wise move is to move on and leave screaming monkeys have at it on their own.
UPDATE: The Presidential Commission on Debates has now stated it will mute the opponent's sound while the other candidate speaks - uninterrupted. This is a mild improvement over the previous, Sept. 29th, debate- but still not enough if Trump is allowed to lie at will as he did in the NBC sponsored Town Hall last week. As Maddow said, Biden does not need this, Trump needs it. Hence, Biden is the one in greater jeopardy, not Trump. The best play for Biden remains to find an excuse - any excuse- and walk away. It simply isn't worth it!
See Also:
Inside the ‘Malarkey Factory,’ Biden’s war room designed to fight online misinformation
Historian Timothy Snyder warns that America is already in its own "slow-motion Reichstag Fire"
https://www.salon.com/2020/10/18/historian-timothy-snyder-warns-that-america-is-already-in-its-own-slow-motion-reichstag-fire/
Donald Trump's commitment to and use of political violence is a matter of public record. Two of the most recent examples include how Trump's followers in Michigan allegedly planned to kidnap and possibly murder Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer. During his debate with Joe Biden, Trump also commanded white supremacist paramilitaries to be prepared to attack his and their "enemies" if he loses on Election Day or is otherwise removed from office.
Trump also wants Joe Biden and other leading Democrats imprisoned and perhaps even executed because he deems them to be "guilty" of "treason" and a "coup" attempt against him. Donald Trump and his Attorney General William Barr have also threatened to use the United States military against the American people if they dare to protest the outcome of the 2020 Election if Trump somehow finds some extra-legal (if not outright illegal) way to stay in office.
Because he is a political sadist and master of misery and pain, Donald Trump is using the coronavirus pandemic as a weapon to physically and emotionally abuse the American people in order to make them more compliant and subservient to his regime. Like other autocrats and authoritarians, he is also using the economic and human devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic to personally enrich himself, his family, and allies as a way of guaranteeing the latter's loyalty.
In all, as with his obsessive rhetoric about "law and order," like other fascist authoritarians Donald Trump and his regime define the "law" in ways that benefit themselves and disregard the law when it does not serve their interests. Through that logic democracy is a tool for the Trump regime to stay in power indefinitely if they "win" and to disregard the outcome on Election Day and beyond if they are voted out of office by the American people.
Trump's strategy of attacking America's democratic norms, institutions, and culture is a constant torrent where the targets are corrupted, weakened, and then finally routed through sheer exhaustion.
As wielded by Donald Trump and other fascist authoritarians, the poison they have injected into the country's body politic and democracy is actually quite slow acting, where the victim becomes used to chronic pain before finally succumbing.
Why does America's mainstream news media continue to avoid describing Donald Trump and his regime as fascist authoritarians? What are they afraid of? How has that evasion helped to empower and normalize Trumpism?
No comments:
Post a Comment