You have eloquently discussed this phenomenon recently. And now your exhibiting it with posts like this one.
First/ I am not sure there’s much of a debate at all here. I am not sure there’s much of a debate at all here This form is exhibiting the exact traits you spoke of and the national narrative.
“trump is a worthless piece of shit. He caused the worldwide pandemic and is personally responsible for the deaths of over 180,000 people. He foments violence and is the reason our cities are burning as we speak and people are fleeing them faster than they can hire moving trucks. This was his plan all along and everybody knows it and anyone who disagrees is not as smart as me.” “ Look, I have tons of anonymous sources to prove it“
”ok- so let’s discuss the national political landscape. What about the party of opposition, the Democrats?”
”No! You cannot discuss that because that’s deflecting from what a worthless human being Donald J Trump is. You cannot discuss Democrats who have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar, or who have done such a poor job with the Covid that they actually are responsible for many deaths, you cannot discuss that democratic cities have poorly handled the violence and if in fact encouraged it and in some ways funded it.”
“why can’t we discuss those things? What if we want to talk about national politics in general in the landscape? What if we want to talk about what other candidates might bring to the table?”
” No! We can only talk about how horrible of a human being Donald Trump is. Anything else you discuss proves that you are brainwashed and not part of reality?”
You do realize, nobody is saying that we can't discuss those things. We've discussed all sorts of things in this thread. We've discussed BLM in detail. We've discussed the protests in detail. We've discussed responsible policing.
But as soon as someone brings up something bad about POTUS, someone deflects and changes the subject to "well what about the Democrats", and then acts like we won't talk about them.
So ok. Let's compare and contrast the 2020 candidates.
I think Donald Trump is morally, intellectually, mentally and temperamentally unfit to hold the office of President. I believe that a president should consider the office of the presidency as larger than himself or his own ambitions; I don't believe Trump does so. I believe that a President should consider themselves President of the whole country; I believe Trump sees himself as the President of his supporters and anyone else is an enemy. I believe that the President should attempt to operate within the law; I believe Trump wants to do whatever he wants and chafes when the law disagrees [sometimes does it anyway]. I believe that Trump is a horrible human being; a narcissistic person without empathy. A person who quite literally views the worth of every other person on Earth by whether or not they like him, rather than anything else; he's the one who "fell in love" with Kim Jong-Un, remember? I believe that Trump is purely transactional, and views every negotiation as win/loss rather than trying to find win-win outcomes; I believe that if Trump was faced with the Prisoner's Dilemma, he'd sing to the cops every time and see his co-conspirator staying silent being the "sucker". I believe he is cruel and sadistic, fully comfortable "punching down", as he did when he made fun of a reporter with a disability. I believe he has no personal morality; while he is supposedly "pro-life", if evidence came out that he knocked up some floozy who he was cheating on his wife with, and he was proven to have paid for her abortion, I don't think ANYONE would be surprised at all. I believe he is a racist and a misogynist. I believe he is a nationalist, not a patriot. Policy-wise, I might consider myself closer to him that Biden,
if he were even remotely "conservative" or "Republican". I don't believe he aligns very closely with traditional Republican policies. Most of the time, especially when it comes to trade, he sounds more like Bernie or Warren.
Now, I think Biden is a doddering old fool. A career politician who has never really done anything outside of Washington. However, I do believe he is an honorable man. I think he truly BELIEVES that what he is doing is public service. I truly believe he will respect the office of President as something bigger and more important than his own ambition. I think he respects the Constitution and understands that it puts limits on his power. I think his history is such that he will do his best to try to work across the aisle with Republicans to accomplish things; he will not view them as "the enemy". Personally, I believe he has empathy; the stories of him continuing to reach out to kids who suffer from a stutter are endearing. I don't think life was made easy for him; and he's suffered plenty of personal loss; I think that humbles a man. Policy-wise, I don't think I'd approve of a lot of what he does, as I didn't under Obama or Clinton. That said, I think he's basically a center-left moderate Democrat. I'm not scared that if we elect Biden that we'll be just like Cuba in 2024.
I think Biden has limitations, but I honestly believe he's going to try to surround himself with smart people and take their counsel. Trump thinks he's the only smart person in the world and surrounds himself with sycophants who blow smoke up his ass. I think Biden would probably go down in history as a "do-nothing" President, which is a HUGE improvement from our current "do-bad" President.
Every President I can remember, from Obama to Bush-43 to Clinton to Bush-41 (I can't go back farther as I was only 10 when Bush-41 was elected), was someone who I think could faithfully discharge the responsibilities of the office. I don't believe that about Trump. Hence I'm not excited for a Biden presidency. But I'm truly terrified by a second [or third/fourth, as he's joked] term of Trump. Quite literally I don't talk much about Biden because I don't think that much of him; but I'm in ABT (anyone but Trump) mode. I believe he is THAT bad.