Still An Easy Choice

Between overcooked airplane chicken or an orange feces and ground-glass burrito.

Okay, the debate was disappointing, let’s get that out of the way. There’s a long history of dismal first debate outings. Sometimes they are followed by stellar second debates. I’m ever hopeful, but there is a fundamental problem here with the Democrats that worries me.

I’ll get to that, but I want to stress my other point right away. Biden and the Democrats are far from perfect, but the alternative right now is unthinkable. What is offered by the Republicans is contrary to long-established conservative American values (let alone progressive ones).

This is the guy we needed at the debate.

Let me emphasize from the beginning that: [A] I do not identify as a Democrat (or liberal); and [2] I do have conservative (and religious) values. At least, I have the conservative (and religious) values of the past. To the extent I’m forced to label myself, I consider myself Libertarian.

I no longer recognize the party of Abraham Lincoln and John McCain (two people who now seem equally historic). It no longer seems comprised of, and certainly not led by, principled, educated, intelligent conservatives.

I think the problem begins with the Tea Party, the modern one that infected the Republican party back in 2009. It was formed in opposition to President Obama’s policies, but even back then I thought there was a kernel of racism to it. The opposition was as much to the man as to the policies.

The Tea Party evolved into the über-conservative fascist-flavored Republican Right Wing it is today. I think the conservatives in this country have badly lost their way. They’re not alone in that, though — so have the Democrats.

I think it’s all part of a more general social problem going back to the 1960s, the Vietnam war, Watergate, and the Hippies. It was an era of discontent, disillusion, and deconstruction. Journalist antagonism grew in response to government lies about the war. Trust in government essentially vanished with President Richard Nixon and Watergate.¹

Combine this with an American education system that’s been badly broken for decades (I noticed it as far back as the 1970s). We live in a world run by people brought up in that defective education system, something to keep in mind. It explains a lot.

The Tea Party became the Far-Right Republican party of disgruntlement and exclusion, even hatred — one that has shown little ability to govern or even a viable plan for governing. They seem more interested in fighting and preventing progress of any kind so they can campaign on how no progress is made by Democrats. I wrote about their tactics back in 2013 [see Republican Terrorism].

Politics has been reduced to a reality show with competing teams. Support is based on identity more than policy or competence. “My candidate, right or wrong!” (A cry heard from both sides.) Politics has become cult-like, almost a religion rather than a social worldview.²

For years I’ve thought principled Republicans should form a new Conservative Party. Likely many moderates and independents would join. I know people who are progressive and people who are conservative, both feeling their respective parties have moved to sociopolitical extremes and left them behind.

Both sides seem to have lost their willingness to compromise. Politics is now a competition where the other side must never get any points. One’s own side is in possession of all the valid points.

This is insanity.

---

We’ve been engaged in a culture war for quite a few years now. It goes back at least to 2008 with the election of President Barack Obama. That — a Black Man in the White House — seemed the final straw for some. A hole in the dyke that grew and grew.

Seemingly without limit, and here we are today in a rising flood water.

A standing President on stage debating a candidate with multiple indictments and now a felony conviction (with all 34 counts unanimously found guilty). A well-known incompetent failure of a businessman and reality show joke who should have been laughed off the stage in 2015 when he descended on his infamous golden calf escalator.

I’ve been blogging since 2011, and it’s interesting (by which I mean terribly depressing) to read my posts from back then. Or, for that matter, from 2015 and 2016. I don’t recognize that world in where we are today.³

The rules for the debate are just one indicator of how far we’ve come (and how far we’ve sunk). Microphones turned off because we can’t trust at least one of the candidates to behave like an adult. No audience because no one knows how to behave with decorum anymore. We’ve lost all sense of shame.

CNN, Jake Tapper, and Dana Bash. Sounds like the beginning of a joke. Which is largely is. CNN is an utterly useless social appendage, a bit like a skin tag. Someone pointed out that an AI would have done a better job, and I can’t help but agree. A feeble attempt at moderation.

The debate itself was utterly pointless. There was never any chance it would be about policy. It was strictly and only about performance.

---

That was the problem. Joe Biden had one job in that debate, especially given it was the first debate. His job was to look strong, to look his best, to turn in an ace performance. By any reasonable metric, he failed.

I hear the excuses. Bad night. Cold medication. Exhaustion. He was never a good public speaker (in fact, he was a stutterer). I’ll even buy them as all true.

Doesn’t really let him off the hook, though. This debate was, in large part, about his age. Lots of younger men have had off nights in debates, but his lack of vigor was painfully apparent. One can’t help but think, damn, this guy is old.

Really old.

Too old?

I blame his campaign for not seeing to it that he was well-rested. I blame his campaign for not focusing on optics and delivery. The guy may be an awkward speaker, but he’s had decades to improve his game. Why didn’t his people better prepare him?

I was struck by Biden’s overly frequent use of the phrase, “The idea that…” when referring to the stream of utter BS from the other guy. Sometimes he used it twice in his allotted time. Apparently, he can’t get over the idea…

Try to factor out the enormous challenge of a first Presidential Debate, the difficulties that naturally come with age, the lifelong stutter, and a likely grueling campaign on top of demanding daily Presidential duties. Try to ignore the optics and pay attention to the words the man said.

And then listen to the words the other man said. It’s hard to understand how there’s any comparison at all.

I guess it makes sense if politics as a team sport. One doesn’t generally compare their team with the other team and switch pick a side based on merit. One is loyal to the home team, hell or high water.

Voting, rather than being about selecting the best (or least worst), is now a matter of identity culture, identity, even protest.

---

One might try to write this off as a difference in a point of view and claim both sides are relatively equal. That it’s just a matter of conservative versus progressive worldview. In the past, there was truth to this, but there is no reasonable comparison now.

Consider the full body of Western history and normative fiction and documentation. There is a clear moral point of view found there, and it’s one where ‘the long arc of history bends towards justice.’

Christians can look to their New Testament. There is no better moral statement to be had than Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. But even atheists have our long history of parables and cautionary tales (including the Bible and Qur’an just as historic moral statements).

But history repeats when we don’t learn from it. Another aspect of our failed education system.

---

I heard a great term recently, “social entropy”. It seems to exactly encapsulate what I’ve been perceiving for years now, possibly going back to the beginning of the millennium. It feels as if society has gotten exhausted — worn out, frayed. It feels as if it’s failing.

It might be due to the signal being lost in the noise of choices. Modern technology and the interweb opened the doors to self-publishing of writing, music, and short movies, many of high quality. There is even a glut of professional content creators, the published authors, the established musicians, and the film and video makers. With a sea of content, nothing stands out anymore.

We no longer share the experience of all loving a great band (one example, Fleetwood Mac). We no longer all share the same movies or TV shows. Our culture has fragmented into bubbles of self-interest and become more chaotic.

Which is entropy — the descent of a system into chaos.

We counter entropy with energy. I can’t say it any better than Leon Wieseltier did when he appeared on The Colbert Report back in 2014:

A democratic society, an open society, places an extraordinary intellectual responsibility on ordinary men and women, because we are governed by what we think, we are governed by our opinions. So, the content of our opinions, and the quality of our opinions, and the quality of the formation of our opinions, basically determines the character of our society.

Yes, exactly. As citizens we have an “extraordinary intellectual responsibility” — a duty — to do our best to make our society a quality society.

As Wieseltier goes on to say:

And that means that in a democratic society, in an open society, a thoughtless citizen of a democracy is a delinquent citizen of a democracy.

Again, yes. Our society depends on us not being thoughtless. It depends on our ability to think critically.

It does not depend on our ability to be on one side or the other. When they are healthy and thoughtful, both conservative and progressive points of view are equally valid. They depend, I think, on whether one is more home-oriented or exploration-oriented. Progressives require principled conservatives to reign in their excesses. Conservatives require principled progressives to reign in their excesses.

We need each other, but we need each other mentally and ethically healthy. We need honesty and honor, decency and fairness. (Anyone know where I can find them?)

Whatever issues those on the Left have with Biden — Israel, inflation, housing, age — they need to take a close look at the candidate on the Right. There is no comparison. Thinking there is a choice has been compared to asking about the chicken:

The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside your seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of crap with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

And the thing is, this joke goes back to the 2016 election. Now, again, many seem to be happily picking the crap with broken glass.

Or at least asking about the chicken.

Yeah, look, I know. It’s airplane chicken, but what can you do? There’s really no choice when the other entrée is what it is.

-30-

1. Sign of the Times: Remember when we all thought Richard Nixon was just the worst? Remember how it was the Republicans who went to him and said that was it, he was done? That level of principled behavior is what we seem to have abandoned in the new millennium.

2. Which brings up another Bizarro World aspect to this. The irony that, in the name of a “Christian Nation”, so-called Christians violate a key tenet of the Founding Fathers (usually so beloved by the right) about separation of church and state to require the (Old Testament!) Ten Commandments be installed (prominently!) in schools, yet they rally behind a blatantly evil man not just utterly ignorant of their principles and dogma, but a greedy revengeful materialist actively breaking Commandments left and right. The hypocrisy there is a little breath-taking.

3. I think the barrel of wine analogy was never more apt. If you have a barrel of wine and add a teaspoon of sewage, now you have a barrel of sewage [see Barrel of Wine; Barrel of Sewage].