The Witness Chronicles, September, 11, 2024
Thank you Taylor, and Kamala
Well, That Was Interesting…
Kamala Harris, the unhinged lies and anger, and then, Taylor Swift
It’s a perfect storm. Kamala (we are now on a first name basis), assassinated Donald Trump tonight, verbally, but also with her body language, a powerful political weapon.
She laughed, looked incredulous, and generally made a fool of a fool. And he has no clue. And then the frosting on the cake, Taylor Swift endorsing Harris with a cat lady photo.
The Democrats must immediately hire Taylor’s publicists whatever they cost. I’m not a Swiftie, but she has 283 million avid followers and she stuck it to Don big time. And the timing was impeccable. He just got slaughtered by Kamala, and then his girl crush crushed him.
It sounds funny but Taylor moves the needle with the youth. It was the frosting and timed to make him go bonkers. Stay tuned, if you can stand to read Truth Social. We can be sure that Trump will be posting maniacally.
We’re having a moment right now, so indulge me. Harris and Trump took two really different approaches to the debate. He played to his true believers, those who believe that evil Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating their neighbor’s dogs. Excuse me, really?
The fact that he went there so early should be a tell. This guy is desperate. And she smirked and laughed on the split screen. And that pretty much sums up how it went.
I’ll admit, I was nervous ahead of this thing. Trump still has enough supporters to keep this thing within the margin of error. Oh, by the way, will someone tell Nate Silver to get lost? He, before this thing, predicted a landslide victory by Trump. Nate, this ain’t your normal election.
For one thing, we have a convicted felon running against a criminal prosecutor and two time state attorney general and we saw that last night.
Since Harris unexpectedly entered this race, just two months ago, it has been surprisingly entertaining and upbeat on the Democrat side, but that will not win it. However there is a pattern here that we saw clearly last night. Trump’s audience, in his head, is those MAGA crowds he sees daily and his incessant lying is a shtick they love.
But it’s not winning him any new converts, it’s chasing them away. Harris, on the other hand, besides relentlessly and successfully baiting him, was solidifying her outreach to groups Trump is pushing away. Blacks, women in general, younger voters. With the last group, Taylor Swift’s endorsement on Instagram included a notable thing, a call for voter registration and early voting.
And Swift is wise enough to understand that simply rallying voters on one night is not enough. They must take action, now. Is it significant? I think it is one more incremental verification that Harris represents a positive future, an important message to Gen Zers who just couldn’t get behind Joe Biden and who deal with a sense of hopelessness.
Besides the difference regarding who each candidate was speaking to, we did see Trump in all his fury, and to be honest, it was pitiful. The fact that he went immediately to preposterous rumors about refugees eating dogs and Democrats killing children, was a clear sign of how desperate he is.
But that desperation likely means this will only get more ugly on the right, up to and beyond the election.We’re dealing with a mad dog backed into a corner, snarling and baring his teeth because he has no other options. And he has an army of cult followers and greedy lawyers behind him.
A few days ago I wrote a piece wondering if Trump really believes his own projected view of the world, a hellish place where everything is falling apart and where he presided over a kind of lost paradise. Last night verified something about this theory.
Rather than following advice of his advisors, he immediately went into his version of that imaginary world and never left, spouting off lie after lie. I think what we saw is the inside view of his fear, a fear that has consumed him until logic and policy are just things his mind cannot follow.
One moment stood out for me. Harris taunted Trump, saying world leaders think he is a fool. To rebut that, Trump pulled out the name of Viktor Orban, the white supremacist dictator who destroyed Hungary’s democracy, as an example of a world leader who thinks Trump is great.
The first person that came into his head was Viktor Orban? That tells me he really is trapped in the bubble of his own narcissism.
For Trump, one core thing remains, the inexplicable loyalty and willing blindness of his supporters, who have made up their minds and will now walk off a cliff with him. That stubborn willingness to adhere to his fantasies says terrible things about our society’s laziness and shallow devotion to ourselves.
He has always sold that idea that we should put our own wants ahead of anything else, the ultimate narcissist vision of greatness. And it’s scary how many of us are still embracing it.
Did the debate change that? I don’t know.
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I watched the debate out of curiosity. One thing that bothers me is how Trump continues to claim he could have prevented this or that from happening. Hindsight is easy. Acting in the moment is rarely so clear. But somehow he never gets called out for these fantasies of how he could have fixed it all - or how he will simply make the current wars go away - Seems very delusional to me. But he is never held accountable for the nonsense nature of these statements.
Who will he win over by fawning over Viktor Orban? When he says things like this I just stop in my tracks to ascertain if I heard right and I miss the next five minutes of his commentary.