The Witness Chronicles, March 10, 2024

Chipping away…

Face It, Joe Biden is Our Guy. Get Behind Him

He just shocked the heck out of the Republican Party

You can’t turn on the tv or visit a news site without a pundit talking about the State of the Union, this past week’s unexpected political entertainment show, for once not hosted by Donald Trump.

SOTU, as it is known, is ordinarily such a boring slog that even a political junkie like me rarely watches it. But this time it was different, just as everything about this Presidential election year is mind-bogglingly different on every level.

To put it bluntly, Joe Biden had to step up big time and he did, catching the entire Republican side of the room flat footed. They sat there mostly mute and looking stunned as though they had really convinced themselves that Biden was practically a corpse.

And that is the most telling thing about the entire Republican Party. They actually believe their own bullshit (pardon my French but there is no more accurate term). This is what happens when you get all your news from one source like Fox and you listen to the endless unhinged rants of your guy.

By the way, that guy knows that repeating lies over and over will eventually result in some people believing the most absurd things, and then they will tell others as though it is the truth, because they think it is.

The problem with this collective delusion is this thing called reality. And they got a dose of it, in spades, from Joe. And 32 million Americans, presumably all voters, because who else would watch this thing, saw Biden stomp all over the crazy until the numbness was palpable.

It’s a hard thing to gradually realize the other guy has a lot to brag about and your guy does not. In fact, your guy is not a presidential candidate, he just plays one on tv. Like tv doctors, in real life he doesn’t know anything about running the government. We don’t want an actor playing a surgeon to come anywhere near us with a sharp object in real life.

Donald Trump is a tv doctor who actually believes he can cure things. Joe Biden is a career politician who knows how DC works and we saw that guy the other night.

Not a big surprise to a few, but apparently a huge surprise to his opponents.

Will this change anything? Here’s how I think that works this year. We won’t see anything like a traditional campaign with debates, rallies, and attack ads. They’ll be there but we won’t be paying attention because there is real life drama chipping away at the incomprehensible loyalty to Trump and his cadre of kooks.

Chipping away is the operative term here. The folks over at Fox and in the Freedom Caucus have been chipping away at Biden with their constant references and referrals to his age, his speech, his health, and his eroding sanity. And it was working until he stepped up in front of the world and blew all that nonsense out the window.

But the chipping away works two ways and we are starting to see Biden chipping away at Trump’s facade. The garbled language, the fact that he cannot pay his legal obligations, the receding donor money, and the constant court cases, not to mention the constant losing.

Here’s the difference. Trump’s facade is razor thin, frail as an ice sculpture and what’s underneath is pretty ugly. With Biden there is a life of service to the American people, hardcore foreign policy experience, actual legislation that is changing the bad economy, and a future.

So all they could really go after was his age and ‘scandals’ that fall to pieces even as they keep touting them as facts. There’s no there, there, but with Trump, there is a lot of there, there. And none of it is pretty.

The question really is, are we going to back the good guy, or just retreat into apathy and let things go to hell in a handbag, for a likely felon? Biden gave the country a reality check this week and unbelievably the Trump Party did not appear to see it coming.

But I really hope that those of us who care about democracy, the rule of law, and the future, not to mention honesty and decency, will get up out of our lounge chairs and start paying attention. Because one choice is a monstrous fake and the other is a highly competent leader with a track record not based on lies and grift.

My advice for the year ahead is pay attention to the chipping away, because we will see the real Donald Trump and it is not pretty.

~ I write The Grasshopper, a letter for creatives, The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate, and The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. All are weekly and free, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your upgrade to a paid subscription helps make that happen. 

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