2024 is here, and so is another election year, too soon for democracy's sake

 

2024 is upon us and way too soon. Time does fly; the next payday can’t come quick enough, and that means two more weeks of one’s life just passes by that much quicker.  With a little over 10 months to go to election, I suppose a lot of people see this as a “pick your poison” choice if it is between Trump and Biden. I think the “mental health” issue is only a dodge for people who think all the problems of the country can be “explained” by “the border” but don’t want to admit that this is just a catchall for their various paranoid delusions, and somehow just "fixing" the border is going fix "everything" that is wrong with their lives.

One may recall, or not, that there were people questioning Ronald Reagan’s mental capacity in the 1984 election, but during a debate with Walter Mondale he joked about not taking advantage of his opponent’s “youth and inexperience.” This somehow “reassured” people about him, and Reagan went on to be re-elected by a landslide; but his “Morning in America” program was just the beginning of the nightmare descent into the deepest, darkest of night for this country. Not only was there the Iran-Contra scandal which Reagan seemed completely oblivious to, but environmental protection was put into the hands of corporate stooges, tax laws were passed that began the rapid increase in the distance between the rich and everyone else, and the anti-labor policies beginning with the firing of the air traffic controllers.

In regard to civil rights policies, Reagan appointed the only far-right black individual with a law degree available for a position in his administration: Clarence Thomas, who was at one point put in charge of the EEOC for 8 years, where he served only the interests of whites who complained about “discrimination.” His only “judicial” experience before barely being confirmed as a Supreme Court justice was one belated year on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which he was completely unqualified for—save for, in eyes of his benefactors, his far-right views. 

Of course we’ve seen the damage that just one term of Trump has done to the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary in general—and worse is yet to come even if Trump isn’t re-elected, because those judges and justices are not going anywhere anytime soon (hell, Thomas has been doing damage on the Court for seemingly forever).

That is the kind of damage Trump is more capable of doing by him having a mentally unbalanced temperament—and frankly, much worse—than Biden is capable of by temperament, since unlike those Trump intends on doing his dirty work for him (like Stephen Miller waiting in the wings, demonstrating that even people of the Jewish faith can be white nationalist and racist), the people Biden puts in policy positions are not inherently evil people and do not wish to cause harm.

We are told that many younger voters and minorities are so “concerned” about Biden that they may not vote for him or anyone at all (save a third-party candidate like, say, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.), unless they get a sense that things are “improving”—which is technically a function of what mainstream news channel they are watching. 

It doesn’t seem to occur to some people that in voting for Trump they are voting for corruption, immorality and the destruction of democracy in this country; there are of course problems that need to be solved in this country, but Trump’s solutions—and unfortunately some of the “alternatives” posing on debate platforms who claim to be speaking to the same audience—the “solutions” he has in mind can only be “achieved” by using a sledgehammer or chainsaw to “fix” a leaky pipe. And of course that only makes the problem much, much worse.

Yet somehow I suspect that one thing that is behind this “fear” of Biden’s age is the “fear” that the current vice president, Kamala Harris, would succeed Biden if he passed away or resigned office due to “health.” She is no raging “leftist,” but we can imagine that some people tolerate her only as long as she is just a token presence who had no power to cause mischief—and now she might, if Biden is re-elected. 

According to fivethirtyeight.com, Harris’ current average negative polling is 57 percent; I mean, why? She hasn’t really done anything that people notice, except maybe make what some people think is a verbal “gaffe” but really only something the far-right leaps to object to. Still, it would have been better if Biden had selected as a running-mate someone who had an “authoritative” and “credible” presence; after all, Barack Obama chose Biden as his runningmate for that reason.

I once thought that RFK Jr. might cause some problems for Biden, but the mainstream media and the Democratic establishment has mostly ignored him as some kind of quack, particularly on his anti-vaccine stance. He certainly is trying to appeal to both sides of the fence…

 

…and a Monmouth poll seems to suggest that those “considering” voting for him come more or less equally from the Biden and Trump camps, about 1-in-5 total. But his favorability polling, according to fivethirtyeight, is all over the map, with one poll showing him at an +18 favorable, while another shows him at -10 negative. I don’t think he has a shot unless he does “shockingly” better than expected in early primaries, and the media is forced to make note of it and to “explain” it to the masses.

Of course there are “alternatives” on the Republican side, if Trump's various legal issues actually sour some of his supporters; at the present time Nikki Haley seems to be giving Trump the most run for his money. But the controversy over her leaving out slavery as the cause of the Civil War—and yes anti-CRTers, the preservation and expansion of slavery was 90 percent of the reason why the South seceded from the Union—shows just how much white nationalist ideology is embedded in the Republican Party. 

And like the UK’s current conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak and the two previous Home Secretaries, Haley (despite her name) is the child of South Asian immigrants of a higher “caste” and thus their attacks on immigration are predictably hypocritical, protecting themselves from scrutiny by joining in the demonizing of other groups in order for them to maintain their "credibility" as "conservatives." The UK's current Home Secretary is black, thus the Tory party is fronting non-whites in that position to disguise a racist immigration agenda.

Should Biden just ride off into the sunset and allow a more “acceptable” alternative to Trump that many voters would prefer if they had the choice? Unfortunately, Biden has always been a bit of an eccentric throughout his time in political life, and there should be no expectation that he would have any more sense that Ruth Bader Ginsburg to get out before the damage was done.

Yet the “damage” one could cause is relative, and frankly if anyone has made America “great again” on the world stage, it is Biden and not Trump, who is just an unpredictable fumbler who confuses those on the international stage and causes them not to trust him or this country. While the fear is that Trump will destroy democracy as we know it, using the instruments of government to create a fascist state with toadying stooges who have no respect for any law save that which they allows them to act without regard to any law, with Biden it seems what “troubles” voters on the “fence” is the fact that other voters may think as they do, meaning that there are just too many other people who have “questions” about his current “fitness.”

But when it comes down to actually voting, I think a majority of people who are under the impression that Trump—who is only a few years younger than Biden—is mentally more “capable” than Biden, may become disturbed by the fact there is a lot of evidence out there of Trump slurring his words, forgetting where he is at, and making incomprehensible statements. And we are supposed to believe that a man like that is less dangerous than Biden, who at least has some semblance of human decency? What one really must be concerned with are those pulling the strings behind the scenes, and with Trump those people are clearly no more or less than Satan’s demon helpers.

And for Trump himself, this all a game to him. He is a narcissist and megalomaniac who is devoted to himself. All those mobs who adore him are fools who follow anything that moves, even over a cliff. People seem to think Trump will “solve” all their “problems,” because someone else is to blame for them, and he will exterminate the "vermin." 

Of course they choose to blame all the wrong people, and thus vote for all the wrong people, like Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert, who are merely on the Republican front line blaming low wages and low services not on their own and corporate paymasters’ policies and greed, but employ code words like “socialist”  to disguise the fact that they really don’t care about, well, you, because they are nutcases who enjoy power because it allows them to act like playground bullies and commit acts of vandalism against democracy.