Lots of people feared that the first presidential "debate" between our two designated right-wing codgers would end up being a train wreck. But nobody could ever have expected a reenactment of the Hindenburg disaster. That Nazi airship blew up in 1937 New Jersey, whereas the more modern fascist version exploded in Ohio on Tuesday night.
If you were still naively operating under the assumption that we have even the merest vestige of a functioning democracy left, than Tuesday night's spectacle starring human dirigible Donald Trump (with a largely muted walk-on assist from Joe Biden) should have permanently disabused you of that quaint notion.
The commentary running through many an aghast head as the grisly event streamed into millions of foreclosure-prone American homes went something like this: (h/t Herb Morrison)
"Oh, the humanity, and all the passengers screaming around here. I... I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest, it's completely a mess of smoking wreckage. And everybody can't hardly breathe. It's hard, it's crazy. Honestly, I can hardly breathe. I'm going to step inside where I cannot see it.... This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed!"
The gasbag blimp known as Donald Trump has been blowing things up for quite awhile now, both verbally and operationally. And since his wreckage will be raining down upon the earth far into the future. the phrase "Oh, the humanity" can't even begin to describe what we witnessed on Tuesday night. For as much as we thought that we were steeled by the last three and a half years of Trumpism, could anything have prepared us for an American president publicly calling on the crypto-fascist Proud Boys militia to "stand back and stand by?" He also urged his ad hoc troops to converge on the nation's polling places on Election Day to monitor balloting and, presumably, to accost voters who look or act suspiciously un-American. Presumably, these volunteer monitor-militias will also be fully armed. Presumably, the very thought of armed freelance election monitors will also keep enough people away from the polls to even affect the outcome.
It's no wonder that Trump wants all the schools to reopen in the middle of a pandemic. Without schools, young people cannot be properly indoctrinated by his proposed Patriotism re-education curriculum. Without the monitoring custodial function which classrooms provide, students might even start to wake up and realize that their leaders in both parties are making a real botch of things.
If they watched the Tuesday night debate debacle, however, they are probably already realizing it.
If anything can finally terrify Undecideds or Stay-At-Homes into voting for the detritus known as Joe Biden, it was Tuesday night's dirigible disaster. Maybe we can pick through the wreckage and salvage something. Although, with such "gaffes" as Biden's indignant insistence that he has "nothing against" Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett because she seems like "a very fine person" Biden does sort of evoke Trump's own infamous remark that "there are very fine people on both sides" of the racist/anti-racist divide.
Biden's disavowal of the Green New Deal, and his admission that his "public option" in health care coverage would just be a means-tested renaming of Medicaid, that he is more prone to starting a war with Russia than "Putin's puppy" is, that he repeated discredited CIA propaganda about Russia putting a bounty on the American invaders and occupiers of Afghanistan, and that he said all of these "reassuring" things with his beady eyes squinting straight through the camera at the terrified viewers at home, might still make some of those annoying "purists" out there continue to refuse to find their sustenance in a toxic landfill.
Here's what Biden said about the bait and switch of a "public option":
"It’s only for those people who are so poor they qualify for Medicaid they can get that free in most States, except Governors who want to deny people who are poor Medicaid. Anyone who qualifies for Medicaid would automatically be enrolled in the public option. The vast majority of the American people would still not be in that option." (my bold.)
Translation: the option is not only restrictive, it is every bit as mandatory as a law requiring people living high on the hog of the minimum wage or reduced unemployment benefits to buy a Bronze plan which they can never afford to use because of obscenely high deductibles and co-pays.
Since cutting off Trump's microphone as he lit his own poisoned gas on fire apparently was not part of the plan by the ratings and profit-hungry corporate media outlets which created Trump in the first place, they will forge right ahead in their unending game of disaster-feasting:
"And, I - I've... lost my breath several times during this exciting moment here. Will you pardon me just a moment? I'm not going to stop talking.... I'm just going to swallow several times until I can keep on."
