This was centuries after the death of Ruth Bader-Ginsburg and centuries before Trump got COVID and exposed scads of other people to it in his massively sociopathic way.
During that debate, a number of things happened.
So, for instance, Trump made clear that Roe means nothing to him and he was just as eager as Biden to see that nothing happen to it:
President Donald J. Trump: (10:25)You don’t know what’s on the ballot. Why is [Roe v. Wade] on the ballot? Why is it on the ballot? It’s not on the ballot.
Vice President Joe Biden: (10:31)It’s on the ballot in the court.
President Donald J. Trump: (10:32)I don’t think so.
Vice President Joe Biden: (10:33)In the court.
President Donald J. Trump: (10:34)There’s nothing happening there.
Vice President Joe Biden: (10:35)Donald would you just be quiet for a minute.
President Donald J. Trump: (10:36)You don’t know her view on Roe V. Wade. You don’t know her view.
Note: Trump’s whole point here was not to attack Biden for supporting Roe, but to insist that he is no more a threat to Roe than Biden is.
For this, the MAGA “prolife” cult has degraded itself in the eyes of man and God to cheer for mockery of the disabled, to spit on POWs, to spit on the graves of “suckers” and “losers” who did for them, to murder refugees by thirst, to kidnap children into rape camps, to inflict mass hysterectomies on brown and poor women.
For this.
To get a man’s soul and give him *nothing* in return–that is what truly gladdens the heart of Our Father Below. – Uncle Screwtape
But wait! There’s more! America also discovered that amid a raging torrent of endless bullying chatter, there was a magic question that could render Trump silent:
Well, almost silent. He did manage to declare himself the Commander-in-Chief of the white supremacist Proud Boys group and tell them to “stand by”. Thanks for showing us what you really believe yet again, sir.
But that was not the ugliest thing he did, amazingly. This was:
But when Biden speaks of loss and pain—of Beau, or of the car accident that killed his wife and daughter—he becomes deeply compelling; as Fintan O’Toole wrote, Biden’s grief is “real and rooted and fundamentally decent.” After eight months of funerals, for hundreds of thousands of American families, the kind of grief that Biden speaks of, the kind that accompanies the loss of a loved one, is no longer distant. The president stood in front of that grieving nation, and taunted a father while he was speaking of his lost son. Before the eyes of a nation struggling with an opioid epidemic, he mocked a dad for having a kid with a drug problem.
More than any other moment of the debate, Trump’s response to Biden’s invocation of his dead son—attempting to make him ashamed of his surviving one—threw the dispositions of the two men into sharp relief. I wondered how Hunter must have felt to see his father speak of his pride in his brother, only for his own name to be brandished as a weapon to inflict shame on his father. And I thought about Biden’s response, which was to reaffirm his pride in Hunter, the troubled son living in the indelible shadow of a departed war hero. In the midst of being attacked by a president trying to wield his own family against him, Biden’s instinct was to reassure Hunter that he is also loved, that nothing could make his father see him as a loser.
Biden acted like a father, doing what almost any parent would have done. And yet because Trump is the kind of man who wonders at the moment of his child’s birth whether the child will someday mortify him, he did not anticipate that response. He did not expect that, instead of embarrassing Biden, he would merely advertise the callousness that has made him unable to govern the country with any sense of duty or responsibility, the narcissism that makes him see those concepts as foolish and naive.
All things in Trump’s world revolve around him, and are a reflection of him. The president evaluates everything—even his own children, even at the time they enter this world—by how they might make him look, and he is incapable of imagining that anyone else would do differently. When he was a reality-show celebrity, this trait was minimally damaging to society; now that he is a president, it has proved catastrophic.
One of the reasons I support Biden is simply this: suffering has done him good as it did FDR good. He is a man capable of real empathy. He even displayed it to Trump when he took sick, and ended his attack ads, a decent thing to do.
Trump, in a way that weds him to some of the worst people in history, appears to have no capacity for empathy. His response to human suffering is either indifference
or mockery.
He is a man capable of taking vengeance on an infant nephew with cerebral palsy in a spat over over Daddy’s money and showing no remorse 20 years later. He is a cruel man who has gathered around him a cruel cult of personality. So cruel are they, in fact, that they always respond to real displays of empathy with cynicism and mockery.
For me, that is the deepest tragedy: that he as unleashed in the hearts and minds of conservative Christians who might have been better, the darkest and most satanic forces in their psyches.
He is a weak person’s idea of a strong person, a stupid person’s idea of a smart person, a coward’s idea of a brave person, a fool’s idea of a wise person, and a loser’s idea of a winner. That anybody could watch that degenerate display of cruelty and come away filled with admiration or think that he “dominated” only fills me with pity and contempt.
I am mortally sick of this sadistic man, and of the evil antichrist cult that adores his exercises of raw nihilist power. I’ll take Biden’s human decency and empathy over him any day.
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5 Responses
This election is not good vs evil. It is normal vs evil.
Three comments that appeared in the past few days sum up what you have to say, Mark. Yes, two of them are from Protestants, but nevertheless, they apply. The third, of course, is from Erk, the stupid one of The trumpenspawn, who will always, always be a disappointment to his disappointing father.
Lance Wallnau, already quoted: “ “I think Americans on the left are striving, they’re fighting with their maker. Fighting with Trump is fighting with God. This will really get them all torqued. They’re fighting God because they’re fighting Trump.“
This is the TRUE Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Should Trump die from COVID, assuming even that he actually has it— i am still not convinced— exactly how will they twist it and their “logic” of god’s chosen one to accommodate that fact? because twist it they will, not reflect on how they were conned by whatever being they believe is more powerful than god.
Dennis Prager, still running for nothing against Mr. Obama: “ “The absence of fathers is often emasculating. I think it happened to Barack Obama. I don’t mean to insult him because it’s not an insult, just a description. I find zero masculine about the man…“And having had no father — a father not because the father died, it’s very different. The father voluntarily disappeared. That is — has an effect on the vast majority of males”….“You get your masculinity in large measure from the adult males in your life. And the loathing of the masculine male is a part of the loathing of Donald Trump. It’s not everything but it’s a big part.”
Trump is a masculine male? We loathe him because he is masculine and we are not? It has nothing at all to do with that petulant, whiny, documented liar? It amazes me that a “man” like Prager can look at a weak, venal, lying, immoral, and corrupt man like Trump and see strength, generosity, honesty, integrity, and greatness. This must be those famous Christian morals I’ve heard so much about. In fact, it amazes me that they even see a man in any except the most general, obvious sense. None of what Donald trump so clearly is has much to do with what I was raised to believe a man should be. My 6 year old godson is a better man than trump.
But finally, the ultimate in Trump Derangement Syndrome: little Erk von Trumpenspawn, trying one more time to please his daddy. “ … He’s literally saved Christianity. I mean, there’s a full-out war on faith in this country by the other side. I mean, the Democratic Party, the far left has become the party of the quote-unquote “atheist.” I mean, they want to attack Christianity, they want to close churches, they want to, you know, they’re totally fine keeping liquor stores open, but they want to close churches all over the country…”
That is a whole boatload of daddy issues from little Erk, who will never be found guilty of being the smart one in La Famiglia. He literally does not know or care what the word literally means. It fits very nicely with the Poor Persecuted Christians narrative. the only war on faith being waged in this country is being waged by people who declare that they are The Bestest Christians Ever. If Jabba the Trump loses or dies, it will be interesting to see how they spin it. It will even be more interesting to see how many people realize that conservative Christianity has been conning them for the last 45 years, just like Daddy Trump has been conning the Christian right.
My ideal scenario: the Democratic Party wins, and wins big. They increase the SCROTUS to 15 members, and put all of the culture war issues to rest, invalidate Citizens United, end the electoral college, re-establish voting rights, and end gerrymandering. Maybe even repeal the second amendment. And the greatest irony of all: ending the possibility of ending Roe v. wade.
A boy can dream.
jj
Either way, your country will be in trouble. Maybe we are witnessing the fall of the American empire.
If he wins, I don’t need to repeat what is already obvious.
But if he loses, some other sources are suggesting, based in part on Trump’s comment about (or to) this heavily armed group called the Proud Boys during the debate, as well as some of the actions of such other far right extremist groups, there could be heavy fighting in the streets…
I am trying to convince a very good friend who has spent the winter in Florida for some 10 years, to stay home this year, even if he hates cold weather!
@ marthe
My own thinking is – and I have been saying this for months – whether he wins or loses, whether it is legitimate or illegitimate, his followers are spoiling for a fight, and there will be violence.
And as I have been saying for years, what this is really about is authoritarianism versus democracy, despite versus egalitarianism, reality versus truthiness. Hillary Clinton was quite right five years ago when she referred to a “basket of deplorables“. It’s not about economic anxiety, but social anxiety.
Look at the accolades heaped upon Kyle Rittenhouse for murdering two people. Look at the plot against Gov. Whitmer- funny how we’renot hearing about Antifa or BLM. Look at the “pro life“ actions of the Anti-maskers, the anti BLM, the anti vaxxers.
This is something that has been in American society for a long, long time.