My Take On Last Night's Debate (just kidding, it wasn't a debate it was a farce)

It is important to understand that the history of presidential debates in this country really doesn’t go back all that far. As a student I remember learning that the 1960 debates between Richard Nixon and John F Kennedy were significant because they were the first ever to be televised, and that Nixon’s poor appearance on television, contrasted with JFKs youthful swagger and confidence, seemed to have made a big impact with voters and arguably swayed the vote toward Kennedy.

The fact of the matter is that the tradition of presidential candidates debating before an audience of any kind doesn’t really go back much further than this point; it is largely an invention of the television age. So now that the dominance of televised media is taking a backseat to the internet and social media, perhaps the relevance of this old format has become passé. At the very least, we may need to more closely examine the relevance and role that these events really play in our electoral process.

Last night I was pretty vocal about the fact that I had no interest in watching this "debate" that took place between presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The fact of the matter is, it was not a “debate” in any sense of the word. I knew it wouldn’t be, and it is beyond me how anyone could have thought that it would. General reactions from nearly everyone I have encountered who tuned in for last nights event is that it was a waste of time. Again, how could anyone have thought it would be anything else but a monumental waste of time? Furthermore, how in the world does anyone think that trying to squeeze out two more of these mud-fights is going to lead to anything useful or productive?

There are some who might feel that we should continue to allow Trump to bloviate publicly in this forum, making a mockery of the entire process for all the world to see in the hopes that he might somehow “hang himself” with his words. At this point though, I honestly don’t believe that there is anyone on this earth who doesn’t know exactly who and what Donald Trump is. There really isn’t anything left to be shocked or outraged about - you’re either outraged or your not.

Trumps refusal to denounce white supremacy as well as his calls for these violent hate groups to “stand down and stand by” should be astoundingly alarming and shocking to the American public. But honestly, can you say that you are the least bit surprised by this? He has made it so plain and painfully obvious exactly who and what he is, what his intentions and motivations are. He’s like a really bad James Bond villain who just can’t keep his mouth shut long enough to prevent himself from revealing his entire evil plot.

Debate or no debate, let’s just go ahead for the record and state the obvious once more about exactly who and what our “president” is:

• Donald Trump is an illegitimate president. He did not win the popular vote in 2016, meaning that a majority of Americans did not want him to be the president. He won the electoral college by a slim enough margin to skate through uncontested, meaning that he did what he’s always done: he gamed the system and got off on a technicality.
  

• Donald Trump is a fascist. He is determined to dismantle and disable every part of the federal government, making any sort of functionality other than those that directly benefit him and his wealthy oligarch peers completely impotent and useless. He clearly believes in an autocratic form of governance where one man has complete control over all he surveys, such as one might see in a place like Russia or North Korea.

• Donald Trump wants to be president for life. Everything he does and says speaks to this on an almost daily basis. Even if he loses by a landslide this November, he is going to do everything he can to once again cheat the system, grab power by the you-know-what, hang on tight and squeeze it to death. He is after all trying to avoid prosecution for his many crimes.

• Donald Trump is a criminal. From the scores of people that he has cheated out of money, housing codes and civil rights laws he broke brazenly as a property owner in New York; allegations of rape and assault, his collusion with Russia to cheat in the 2016 election, his violation of the Emoluments Clause, his refusal to give up his private business interests, his inhumane treatment of refugees seeking asylum at our nations border — and of course, the big reveal this week that shouldn’t be a shock to anyone: he’s been cheating on his taxes for years. That’s just a short list of things that he’s been caught doing. I’m sure there is plenty I am forgetting, and who knows what else he’s done that we don’t know about.

• Donald Trump is a white supremest. No mystery here, folks. From his efforts to delegitimize the country’s first Black president (the so-called “birther movement”) to his declaration of racist white mobs rioting and murdering as they chanted “Jews will not replace us” as “fine people,” he’s done nothing to hide who he really is from all of us. We’ve always known exactly what he and others meant when they said “make America great again.” He is determined to systematically roll back every progressive piece of legislation adapted over the last century that has done anything to benefit civil and equal rights, putting women and minorities “back in their place” and once again returning full power to the white male hierarchy.

• Donald Trump is a misogynist. Aside from the obvious rape allegations and “grab them by the pussy, blood coming out of wherever,” moments, the party once known as “The Grand Old Party,” now known as “The Party of Trump” uses tactics like the abortion debate, the pay gap and other gender disparities as a means of control over women, especially women from poor and working class backgrounds, further keeping the American public, divided and powerless. Trump didn’t invent this strategy, but he seems to be making it worse. Even the fact that his most recent pick for a Supreme Court Justice nominee (which let’s face it, is a completely bullshit hypocritical move on the part of McConnell, Graham and the rest of these spineless Republican cowards in the US Senate) is a woman, by all accounts Amy Coney Barrett is an ultra-conservative from the religious right who will do all that she can to roll back reproductive rights for women, not to mention advance the 2nd amendment drive agenda for the NRA - and of course, could potentially be a deciding vote for Trump should the November 3rd elections results end up being disputable (which Trump will no doubt contend that they are.)

• Donald Trump is a liar. This is well documented by journalists and fact-checkers the world over. He speaks untruths like it’s his own private language, thinking that if he says it enough it will become truth, and he can create his own reality. His lies aren’t even particularly clever or convincing, they don’t have to be - they just need to be outlandish or distracting enough to take some of the heat off so he can get away with whatever it is he’s trying to pull off in that moment, biding time and keeping the press and the media baffled as we make our way from scandal to scandal, crisis to crisis.

• Donald Trump is a demagogue who has convinced the majority of his followers that the hardships they face in their lives: chronic unemployment and drug abuse, food instability and rampant poverty, have little or nothing to do with the greed of capitalist billionaire industrialists who don’t give a damn about them, and that it has everything to do with the people they don’t like: blacks, jews, hispanics, immigrants, muslims and gays; taking their jobs, infiltrating their communities and disrupting their “traditional American values.” Of course, the remainder of his supporters are themselves wealthy industrialists who have directly benefitted from his tax breaks (the one real thing that he actually accomplished as president.)

• Donald Trump will do everything in his power to steal this election. He’s gotten away with it once already, he’s going to do it again. He’s doing it now, as we speak. He’s gotten away with literally every crooked thing he’s ever done in his life and he has no reason to believe that he won't get away with this now. Our only hope is that our broken system is just unbroken enough so that if those of us who know better come out in strong enough numbers and vote, his loss will be so great that any case he tries to make against the results won't have a leg to stand on.

I could go on, of course. Nothing here is news, and we should all be very familiar with all of this. There are so many ills and evils that have been and continue to be perpetrated by this “regime” (Trump’s word for what should be a “presidential administration” for anyone else) that one can quickly lose track and become exasperated by the whole thing. This is what they are counting on, that we who know better and want for more from our leadership and government will be so overwhelmed with all of this fuckery that we will become apathetic and passive and just dismiss all of it, perhaps not even bothering to show up at the polls to cast our vote.

We can’t do that. We won’t do that!

What do we need to know about Vice President Joe Biden? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. By this time most of us should have a fairly good idea of who Biden is; he’s been in American politics longer than I’ve been alive, and he served as VP under one of the most popular presidents in recent history. Any faults or shortcomings he may have are basically immaterial at this point — He’s not Donald Trump! He’s not a divisive, racist, fascist criminal demagogue who wants to overthrow the government and turn himself into an omnipotent dictator.

What else do you really need to know?