I despise Presidential elections.
Nothing brings out the stupids quite like a presidential election.
Stupid people become energized by their own dumbness. It’s a bit like a dog barking at itself in the mirror.
The amount of inane gibberish I have to crawl through on a daily basis is soul-crushing. Everybody seems staggeringly uninformed about anything that pertains to anybody or anything outside their own front door. This is the part that scares the rest of the world the most. The rest of the world seems at least somewhat aware of their own history and where they fit in it. They seem willing to own up to past sins, and they can at least agree on the basic stuff. They can find other countries on a map. They agree on science and the efficacy of vaccines and that Nazis were bad. They can spell, or are at least aware that most social media platforms include a built in spell-check, free of charge. They can use “to, too” and “there, their, they’re” in a sentence without triggering every English teacher in North America.
Here? Not so much. A five minute conversation with an average voter is enough to plunge me into spasms of phantasmagoric doom. To watch a few hours of C-SPAN is to realize that the people we elected are often even dumber than the people who elect them. Congress is a motley assortment of friendless, grievance-addicted misfits who you’d instantly avoid in any room you walked into. They are the kind of people who walk into a near empty theater and sit right next to you. They no longer legislate, which is boring and requires actual literacy. Instead they perform for the cameras, like bleating monkeys. They audition for future scumbaggery, be it a Vice Presidential nomination or a TV pundit job. These will pay much better than the Congressional salary of $174,000, which these people somehow always manage to transform into millions by the time their term ends. They do this by being so crooked that they need an assortment of aides to screw their clothes on them every morning. We elect what we see in our own mirrors. This is all OUR fault. I hate to break it to you. Or myself, for that matter. Butthead lookalike Matt Gaetz didn’t wander into DC and squat in a Florida congressional office. Millions of mind-numbingly dumb Floridians SENT him there. We ASKED for this, bubba.
Somehow the United States is once again looking at a Biden vs Trump matchup for President, apparently not at all swayed by the historically advanced age of both men, not to mention the world-bending clusterfuck the same contest triggered the last time, which included an attempted coup broadcast live on television, complete with rebel flags, a noose for the Vice President, a few dead bodies, and enough white supremacists to start yet another spring football league. Trump might be bankrupt or in jail, or both, come election night, which would be an ironic look for the party of law and order. The man has recently resorted to GoFundMe campaigns and hawking gold sneakers online to pay off his by-now-almost-comically large legal bills. I’m not sure the framers of the constitution ever imagined a guy facing 91 felony counts would command a cult following, but we’ve come a long way, baby.
Meanwhile President Biden is trying to deal with the mounting pressures of aiding Ukraine against Trump’s strongman-crush, along with the shitstorm that is Gaza, while at the same time for being whipsawed by a border crisis that Republicans have openly admitted they have zero intention of addressing because Trump specifically ordered them not to address it. Better for it to remain something to campaign on, the same way Reagan cut a deal with the Iranians to ensure that the hostages were not released until he had taken the oath of office from Jimmy Carter.
The media seem intent on portraying a Biden in mental decline, while Trump gets a pass despite constantly word-dribbling on himself at his rallies, where he often sounds like a Led Zeppelin record playing backwards. He has recently taken to suggesting that endless videos of him saying batshit things are all due to AI manipulation, which is just the sort of explanation guys who will spend $400 for sneakers will snort up like the lines of cocaine in Tony Montana’s desk in the movie Scarface. I’ve long ago stopped trying to reason with these people, and if forced to converse with them I always make sure to use small words and short sentences. Roughly the same way I’d deal with somebody who just claimed they saw Bigfoot.
The actual President is old and probably exhausted and has polling numbers south of Jimmy Carter’s, which has the slightly cracked wing of the Democratic party doing what they always do….which is….threatening to “make a point” by either staying home or voting for some random loon like Joe Lieberman, who I didn’t realize was still alive, or RFK Jr, who is so serious about moving into the Oval Office that he’s asking the quarterback of the New York Jets to be his running mate, but only because Jesse “the Body” Ventura turned him down. If Democrats can’t pick a fight with Republicans, they are more than willing to pick one with each other just to stay busy. May they be crushed by the large boulders of a crumbling democracy.
Joe Biden is too old to be President. And so is Donald Trump. Most people their age have already had their car keys taken away. We need something other than 2 octogenarian white dudes, one of who couldn’t remember when his son died, and the other who mistook a photo of the woman he sexually assaulted for his second wife.
We need to do better.
And so it goes.
I wouldn’t blame you if you needed to take notes on all this. It’s a lot to ponder.
In a bit…
—tf
I agree with everything you stated ..except...I think Joe Biden DOES remember when his son died. Biden is juggling so many things...and doing a great job despite all the obstruction....that it's easy to blank out now and then. I know a lot of 81-year-olds who are as sharp as ever, but what throws people off...and what appears to " age" Biden is his speech impediment coupled with the multitude of issues he is dealing with right now.
That being said...I really dread the upcoming months. How does trump manage to slither out of every situation!!??
I too agree with everything you said except like Carmella I know Joe Biden remembers when Beau died. I am scared to death that no matter what we do that buffoon Trump could get elected - not without chicanery though. Manafort is being called back into the fold fresh from prison and Bannon is sitting in his office pulling strings. It’s enough for this 77 year old to start looking for real estate in Ireland!!