Debate open thread, part 1: Two men
Join me on a thought experiment.
Imagine, for a moment. Imagine that after election day 2016 Donald Trump paused for a moment, and took in the enormity of what had just happened. Took in that he was the proverbial dog who caught the car. Realized the great and heavy responsibility which now rested on his shoulders, the fates of billions of people depending on his decisions. And imagine if this triggered something in him. Imagine if he, like Ebenezer Scrooge, on that Christmas morning after the ghosts visited him, decided to be a better person, to rise to the occasion, to not be the callow, louche, selfish man he had always been. Imagine if he had defied Michelle Obama's dictum that the presidency doesn't change you, it reveals you? Imagine if he, for once in his life, had decided to do something good, think of someone other than himself?
Of course, he didn't.
No. As Mrs. Obama said, the presidency revealed him, in all his moral turpitude, grossness, and vileness. He felt no civic duty to be more than he had been, because in his mind he was perfect. Perfection doesn't need improvement. A seventy-year old man who had spent his life solely in the pursuit of his own wants and desires was not going to have an epiphany. Men and women like Trump have no inner life. They don't reflect on the things they say, do, or think. The way in which they lead their lives is, to them, the only correct way to do so. They have neither the psychological nor the philosophical scaffolding to step back and consider another way of being. They are who and what they are, and will never be anything other.
Tonight this unsuitable man faces his polar opposite.
Joe Biden is a man of faith. He's a man of principle. He's a man of duty. He's a man madly in love with his current wife, as he was madly in love with the wife he lost so tragically in a car accident. He loves his children and his grandchildren with a boundless love. Joe Biden is a man who fully recognizes the bounty which this country has bestowed upon him, and believes in its values, especially when the country doesn't live up to them. Pres. Biden doesn't think, "What's in it for me?", but instead thinks how the most people can be helped. Joe Biden came out of retirement because he couldn't stand by as Senator Bernie Sanders seized the Democratic Party and led it to a disastrous defeat and a second Trump term. Pres. Biden couldn't countenance that traitor spending another day in the White House past January 20, 2021. Unlike Eric Trump's blatherings, Pres. Biden truly has sacrificed his honorable retirement to serve the country he loves, and to make the world better than when he found it.
And for that, what does he get? Memes, scurrilous mockery, a scorched earth campaign by the press. He gets called "Genocide Joe" because he won't leave Israel to its fate, and then an antisemite because he holds Israel to the standard of what it is, a Western democracy. He gets blamed for the overturning of Roe v. Wade by a court to which he has appointed only one justice, while his predecessor appointed three, which sealed the fate of the national right to abortion. He gets derided by the likes of Jon Stewart and John Oliver, who are not fit to comment on his actions, as they've never risked anything.
Frankly, I would not have blamed him if he had decided to not run again and let the chips fall where they may. But he's a better man than I am, and his moral sense precluded that course of action.
So tonight we see not only two diametrically opposed political viewpoints, but two diametrically opposed examples of what it is to be a human. An absolute wretch on one side, and a good, kind, decent man on the other. I know which one will get my vote.
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