What Is to Be Done? - Part 1

"Should I stay or should I go?"

Biden’s reaction to Trump saying historians rate Trump one of the best presidents.

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Welcome back to “Musings and Amusings of a B-List Writer” and greetings to new readers. If you would like to support my work, please consider upgrading to paid or sign up as a paying subscriber:

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{NOTE: I am aware that the title of this essay is the same as that of a work by V.I. Lenin, so I want to preempt being called before a future Trumpist McCarthyite committee by stating unequivocally that I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party. The title just fits what I’m saying.}

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Well come on and let me know

Should I stay or should I go?

Should I stay or should I go now?

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I go there will be trouble

And if I stay it will be double

So come on and let me know

A much wider audience became familiar with The Clash’s 1982 song “Should I Stay or Should I Go” when it was used frequently in the hit Netflix series Stranger Things beginning in 2016.

Perhaps unaccompanied by the music, the lyrics are now playing in President Biden’s mind. His decision is of enormous import for the future of the United States and the survival of democracy and freedom.

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“He just doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

That quotation should have been the lede on every story about the debate on Thursday evening. Well, something like it was the takeaway. But the antecedent to he in the quotation is, as it obviously should be, Donald Trump. President Biden said it about an hour and eight minutes into the debate.

Sometimes, Dog-Bites-Man Needs to be Covered as Important News

Yet the story everywhere has been about how inarticulate and confused President Biden was.

There is, alas, much truth in that assessment, as I’ll discuss in a moment. But why did it become completely—and I do mean completely—the story of a debate in which Trump lied constantly, audaciously, and absurdly? Trump was, as he has long done, following the prescription of his role model, a failed Austrian artist whose spreading of hate led to the death of tens of millions of human beings in the 1940s, as he outlined in his 1925 book, the title of which translates to My Struggle:

… the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

The answer should be clear: the venerable journalistic maxim, “When dog bites man, that’s not news. But when man bites dog, that’s news.”

Trump lying his ass off is dog-bites-man. Oh hum. But Biden seeming even to approach the Trumpian level of incomprehensible babble? That’s man-bites-dog! Headline it everywhere! Have it dominate the news cycle for days … weeks … all the way to Election Day!

Everybody (apart from the millions of people in his cult) already knows that Trump is an ignorant, evil, lying, power-grabbing man who cares nothing for anyone but himself, right? So why report it when he does it yet again? But Biden has, all the spliced video clips to the contrary notwithstanding, been understood by people in the media to be a knowledgeable, effective leader who, apart from his lifelong stuttering, has been an effective communicator.

I readily admit that, while watching the debate in real time, I was screaming and nearly sobbing at the worst moments in President Biden’s performance (and that’s what this is all about: performance, not ability or honesty, or any of the other things that matter in being president).

I began writing this piece with the idea that Biden was as bad on Thursday evening as the overwhelming consensus in the media holds that he was—and as I remembered him having been.

There is no gainsaying the fact that Joe was not at his best during the “debate.” At some point after I began to write, it occurred to me that I should, as horrible as the experience was almost certain to be, watch the event again, rather than depending on my immediate reaction and that of the media. I was surprised when I did so.

Joe Biden had two very bad moments during the 90-minute event. But, in watching it again, I realized that, on the whole, he was much better than it had seemed while it was happening.

Heather Cox Richardson made a very important point after the debate:

It went on and on, and that was the point. This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.

It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has.

Absolutely true. That is what was happening during most of the “debate.” But it does little to explain President Biden’s Trump-level incoherence early in the debate, when Trump had only just started his gallop of rapid-fire lies and nonsense.

Biden’s worst moment came during the second time he spoke. Here is a portion of what he said then:

… For example, we have a thousand trillionaires in America – I mean, billionaires in America. And what’s happening? They’re in a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2 percent in taxes. If they just paid 24 percent or 25 percent, either one of those numbers, they’d raised $500 million – billion dollars, I should say, in a 10-year period.

We’d be able to right – wipe out his debt. We’d be able to help make sure that – all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the COVID – excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with.

Look, if – [long pause] we finally beat Medicare.

And it was worse – much worse – seeing and hearing it than it looks reading it. It was (for a brief portion of the debate) similar to the unhinged word salads that Trump so often tosses at his rallies.

Then, about sixteen minutes in, after Trump had served up for him the proverbial hanging curve ball over the center of the plate that Biden should have hit out of the park. Trump lied outrageously about his and the public’s positions on abortion, but after addressing that lie briefly, Biden veered into talking about a woman killed by an immigrant!

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On Thursday night, the level of the existential crisis confronting democracy and freedom in the United States and around the world in 2024 rose to the point where it is lapping over the levees and threatening to wash us all away.

And now, the extreme right-wingers—don’t dare call them “conservatives”—on the Supreme Court have decreed that the President is above the law, in effect, a king or dictator. Joe Biden has no interest in wearing a crown, but Donald Trump salivates at the prospect.

Mapping the Way to Save America

Those of us who value the American Experiment and freedom must take a deep breath and then analyze the situation so that we can come together on the best way forward.

The first step is to have a serious think on what our essential objectives are and what the undeniable facts are.

That Without Which There Is Nothing: Defeat Trumpism

■ The sine qua non [in case your Latin or legalese is rusty, that means “That without which there is nothing”] is the defeat of Trump and the authoritarian movement he heads. All decisions must be made with our eyes on that fact.

■ Personal ambitions and feelings must be laid aside for the duration of the Campaign to Save America. Yes, I know that is asking the impossible of most people in politics, but we must implore them to think of the common good—or, more accurately, the common harm, the common disaster that would result from Trump and his fascist minions gaining power.

Considering how what we do now will affect my chances to be the Democratic nominee in 2028 are senseless if Trump is not defeated, because there will be no meaningful election in 2028 if he wins.

■ Donald Trump is not Joe Biden’s opponent. He is not the Democratic Party’s opponent.

Donald Trump is America’s opponent.

He is freedom’s opponent.

He is democracy’s opponent.

He is women’s opponent.

He is the Free World’s opponent.

He is truth’s opponent.

He is the rule of law’s opponent.

He is science’s opponent.

He is history’s opponent.

He is the planet earth’s opponent.

President Biden’s performance does not in the slightest indicate that he is not infinitely (almost literally) preferable to his opponent. But the question of whether he or another candidate will be more likely to win remains.

The jaw-dropping anti-American decision by the monarchist majority Trump created on the Supreme Court makes the decision on “Should he say or should he go” even more consequential, though it may also mean that the alternative of reversing the Declaration of Independence will become so horrible to most Americans that any lower-case d democrat will be able to win.

More to come …