Yikes!
That was Embarrassing
First of all, Trump’s performance was thoroughly unimpressive. If he were up against a serious opponent, he would’ve come across as a rambling old man yelling at the aloof clouds. One supposes Trump’s hyperexpressive countenance and jocular personae is not without its avuncular charm. Personally, I find Trump’s circumlocutory stream of consciousness to be irritatingly inarticulate. However, I don’t want to over-valorize the verbal. I’ve met men who stumbled and fumbled over their words, but their lack of linguistic litheness belied the deep strategic sophistication of a quantitative mind. They may be the case with Wharton graduate Trump.
What can be said about Clottin’-Eyed Joe’s debate performance that could not be said about the Hindenburg. Oh, the humanity! Joe Biden is among the walking dead. He’s like a ghoul from Fallout, except ghouls are fast while the bradykinesic Biden is in permanent slo-mo mode. He stood on the debate stage mouth-breathing, teeth in a U shape, and staring blankly into the middle distance, looking every bit the part of the elderly dementia patient. I honestly thought he looked like he could die on stage at any moment. It is cruel what age does to the human mind and body, and Biden is a walking memento mori of what horrid fate awaits us should we live long enough. I am now so much more in touch with my own mortality after watching the President of these United States slowly perambulate a foot into the cold, dark sepulchral confines of the grave on live national television.
Joe’s body language was that of a beaten prizefighter after losing a title belt. His movements were stiff and angular. His voice was hoarse and is, one can only assume, settling itself into the death rattle his failing lungs will make when they feebly power his final vocalization. His responses were unfocused, vapid, and stereotyped in the clumsy way of a man who was meticulously prepped about what to say. Yet, he came out and delivered pre-prepared lines in the awkward mechanical motion of a clock that needs to be rewound by its handler’s key ere its gears slow to a permanent stop. No amount of professional curation could cure him of the ravages that time has wrought on his splattered grey matter. His train of thought runs off the tracks like it was in East Palestine after an IDF bombing run.
One of the highlights for yours truly was when this flat, brassy, woodwind duet was pulled into blowing the sax on the perennial problem of who’s a better caretaker for blacks. This was a duo of out of touch Boomers taking turns tilting at the windmills of pre-Civil Rights Era racial disparities, with Sancho Panza in the background building a bridge over the Potomac. Elderly White people have a peculiar pathologically altruistic need to care for a sociopathically indifferent black America, in much the same way that spinsters have a need to care for a house full of cats who are waiting for them to die so they can consume their corpse before it turns cold. Any demands for performative action of an American politician to show they have blacks’ best interests at heart will always be met with prompt and pitifully obsequious compliance.
Ultimately, this debate was a contest of the relative cognitive capabilities of these two thoroughbred horses who should have been mercifully put out to pasture long ago. Trump is the hands down victor in that, like the tallest man in a midget colony. Trump cannot give straightforward answers to questions that reveal a deep grasp of the subject matter and a focused commitment to clearing up his interrogator’s uncertainty. But he can still deliver sharp one-liners with the intuitive sense of timing of a comedian accustomed to managing a stage presence. Joe’s blows were glancing and didn’t take Trump off his stride. Trump waltzed betwixt the raindrops in this one. The interviewers, given to the patently transparent pretense of objectivity, were more of a challenge than Trump’s political opponent.
Even if the Democrats’ big city political machines spin like Natanz centrifuges and deliver enough minority mail-in ballots to win the electoral college, with performances like this it will be a struggle to convince the public Biden’s stolen success is legitimate. I’m sure the DNC dons want to replace Slidin’ Biden with a darling Deep State dame like Gretchen Whitmer. They have only four full calendar months to pull the alarm for the most unprecedented Chinese fire drill in American history.
W Trump… big league.