Dear America,
I've had something on my mind for about a week now, and it's probably the same thing you've been thinking about. I tuned in to the June 27 debate between Biden and Trump with trepidation to begin with, but for some reason I watched even though I feared the worst. It was to be two men of my vintage--I'm two months younger than Trump--trying to convince a skeptical world that neither of them was too old to run our country, at least to the extent that a president does so. Note that I didn't say "young enough to run our country." I didn't because "young enough" was a train that had already left the station for both of them a decade or so ago. It's not that a person in his or her sixties is ipso facto too old; some people of that age are still possessed of the acuity needed. But Trump probably was never possessed of that qualification, which is why he has never won an election other than in the electoral college. And while Biden was at least marginally fit when he ran in 2020, the prospect of him staying so seemed a wing and a prayer then, and neither the wing nor the prayer eventuated. So I tuned in and waited with bated breath for what I had come to assume would be a death knell of our democracy, and sure enough, within seconds of when Biden began his first debate response I had to restrain myself from turning off the television and going to be in the hope that it had been just a bad dream. And by the time he had finished saying what he may have intended to say, I fell in to a despondent daze. I watched for another ten minutes or so, my despair growing deeper by the second, and then I had had enough. But an hour later I couldn't help myself; I yielded to the hopeful delusion that what I had seen already was just an aberration, not a portent. I tuned back in, and nope. It hadn't been an aberration. Although Trump's outrageous blathering, lying, hyperbolic inarticulate ravings had now been amplified by incoherence--if you've ever read something he said in its aftermath you'll know what I mean--Biden still was getting the worst of it. Since Trumpers don't acknowledge any of Trump's faults and shortcomings, Biden was clearly losing the debate. I was crestfallen by the time it was over. Then came Jill Biden's irrational, enabling delusional evaluation of Biden's performance, and my despair turned into anger. The day after and the day after that just solidified my consternation, and continued to do so until this very moment.
But as time progresses, I become more aware of some disturbing realities that actually work in our collective favor. First, the reasons for which people were committed to voting for either of these two deluded pretenders hadn't changed. Trumpers were still going to vote for Trump and Bidenites would likewise vote for their man. As to the previously uncommitted, they have been the voice that we will all be hearing loud and clear on November 5, the day after the election, and they are what worries me. They tend to be thinking about the qualifications of the candidates rather than just choosing a side. There is an old denomination used by Democrats: "yellow dog," as in "I'd vote for an old yellow dog" as long as he was a Democrat, and the yellow dog Democrats will still vote for Biden, if only because he isn't the other guy, and that includes me in this case. Don't get me wrong. I've voted for Republicans in the past like Francis Sargeant for governor of Massachusetts back in the seventies, and Senator Ed Brooke too. But I would vote for an old yellow dog...hell, I'd vote for a dead dog...before I'd vote for Donald Trump, and I suspect that a Trump voter's got no better than a coin toss of a chance to get into heaven too. But none of that is what motivates me today, now as I write to you.
Trump is a miscreant, and thus there is no point in even mentioning his loathsome qualities, including hubris, megalomania, conceit...just make a list of all of the worst qualities a president can have and Trump is a poster child for each of them. But as for Biden, I didn't believe until he began parrying the obviously apt appraisals of his appalling performance in the debate with trite phrases like, when you get knocked down you get up again, and I just want to finish what I started, and I know how to do this job. None of that rah, rah nonsense is worth a tinker's damn. Yet despite that fact, and I believe Biden knows it's a fact, he persists out of the same qualities that motivate Trump: hubris, prideful-ness, personal ambition and a single minded commitment to his own self-interest and aggrandizement.
But while Trump will reside in his own kind of hell in the next life, Biden will have one of his own too. But Biden will leave something he surely doesn't want posterity to see. His name will be mentioned in the same sentences as people like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and like that of everyone who, as the old saying goes, stayed too late at the fair. Unfortunately, we'll pay a price for both of their conceits in the end. Ginsburg's we are already paying, and I fear that Biden's is just a few months away...but it's coming unless he sees the light.
Your friend,
Mike
I've had something on my mind for about a week now, and it's probably the same thing you've been thinking about. I tuned in to the June 27 debate between Biden and Trump with trepidation to begin with, but for some reason I watched even though I feared the worst. It was to be two men of my vintage--I'm two months younger than Trump--trying to convince a skeptical world that neither of them was too old to run our country, at least to the extent that a president does so. Note that I didn't say "young enough to run our country." I didn't because "young enough" was a train that had already left the station for both of them a decade or so ago. It's not that a person in his or her sixties is ipso facto too old; some people of that age are still possessed of the acuity needed. But Trump probably was never possessed of that qualification, which is why he has never won an election other than in the electoral college. And while Biden was at least marginally fit when he ran in 2020, the prospect of him staying so seemed a wing and a prayer then, and neither the wing nor the prayer eventuated. So I tuned in and waited with bated breath for what I had come to assume would be a death knell of our democracy, and sure enough, within seconds of when Biden began his first debate response I had to restrain myself from turning off the television and going to be in the hope that it had been just a bad dream. And by the time he had finished saying what he may have intended to say, I fell in to a despondent daze. I watched for another ten minutes or so, my despair growing deeper by the second, and then I had had enough. But an hour later I couldn't help myself; I yielded to the hopeful delusion that what I had seen already was just an aberration, not a portent. I tuned back in, and nope. It hadn't been an aberration. Although Trump's outrageous blathering, lying, hyperbolic inarticulate ravings had now been amplified by incoherence--if you've ever read something he said in its aftermath you'll know what I mean--Biden still was getting the worst of it. Since Trumpers don't acknowledge any of Trump's faults and shortcomings, Biden was clearly losing the debate. I was crestfallen by the time it was over. Then came Jill Biden's irrational, enabling delusional evaluation of Biden's performance, and my despair turned into anger. The day after and the day after that just solidified my consternation, and continued to do so until this very moment.
But as time progresses, I become more aware of some disturbing realities that actually work in our collective favor. First, the reasons for which people were committed to voting for either of these two deluded pretenders hadn't changed. Trumpers were still going to vote for Trump and Bidenites would likewise vote for their man. As to the previously uncommitted, they have been the voice that we will all be hearing loud and clear on November 5, the day after the election, and they are what worries me. They tend to be thinking about the qualifications of the candidates rather than just choosing a side. There is an old denomination used by Democrats: "yellow dog," as in "I'd vote for an old yellow dog" as long as he was a Democrat, and the yellow dog Democrats will still vote for Biden, if only because he isn't the other guy, and that includes me in this case. Don't get me wrong. I've voted for Republicans in the past like Francis Sargeant for governor of Massachusetts back in the seventies, and Senator Ed Brooke too. But I would vote for an old yellow dog...hell, I'd vote for a dead dog...before I'd vote for Donald Trump, and I suspect that a Trump voter's got no better than a coin toss of a chance to get into heaven too. But none of that is what motivates me today, now as I write to you.
Trump is a miscreant, and thus there is no point in even mentioning his loathsome qualities, including hubris, megalomania, conceit...just make a list of all of the worst qualities a president can have and Trump is a poster child for each of them. But as for Biden, I didn't believe until he began parrying the obviously apt appraisals of his appalling performance in the debate with trite phrases like, when you get knocked down you get up again, and I just want to finish what I started, and I know how to do this job. None of that rah, rah nonsense is worth a tinker's damn. Yet despite that fact, and I believe Biden knows it's a fact, he persists out of the same qualities that motivate Trump: hubris, prideful-ness, personal ambition and a single minded commitment to his own self-interest and aggrandizement.
But while Trump will reside in his own kind of hell in the next life, Biden will have one of his own too. But Biden will leave something he surely doesn't want posterity to see. His name will be mentioned in the same sentences as people like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and like that of everyone who, as the old saying goes, stayed too late at the fair. Unfortunately, we'll pay a price for both of their conceits in the end. Ginsburg's we are already paying, and I fear that Biden's is just a few months away...but it's coming unless he sees the light.
Your friend,
Mike
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