09-16-2020, 12:47 AM
(09-15-2020, 11:42 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The difference between Trump and previous candidates is stark. Back in 1976, Republican Gerald Ford ran for election and made one gaffe at a debate, saying Eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination, and it cost him the election. Nixon lost a debate to JFK because Nixon looked nervous and sweated on TV and it cost him the election. Michael Dukakis' numbers plummeted just because he rode around in a tank and because an ad accused him of letting Willie Horton off easy. Al Gore lunged toward Bush in a menacing way in a debate and it hurt his chances. George Bush seemed aloof compared to Bill Clinton in a debate and it cost Bush. Hillary correctly labeled some of Trump's supporters as deplorable and it hurt her numbers. Even in 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin made gaffes about seeing Russia from her window, and it hurt McCain.
Trump can say he could go out on 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and he wouldn't lose any voters, OK? (and maybe he actually just did something like that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y345hhC8N1c ) He can say McCain was not a hero because he was captured, insult a gold star parent, and call USA soldiers who die "losers and suckers," and still no-one deserts him. He can promise that protesters will be carried out on stretchers and ask his followers to punch them, and they do. He can make fun of handicapped people all he wants, and does not suffer the fate of Reagan's Interior Secretary James Watt in 1982 who merely used the word "cripple." He can tell people to vote twice, and openly and admittedly lie and cover up that he knew all about the coronavirus that has killed 200,000 Americans under his watch, but called it nothing to be concerned about and did very little about it. He can lie about paying off a prostitute, and call climate change a Chinese hoax that science knows nothing about. He can openly ask foreign leaders to interfere in our elections. He can call the press the enemy of the people. He can call a mexican-american judge who rules against him a so-called judge. He can accuse his opponent's father of assassinating JFK. He can say he believes Putin more than his own intelligence agencies. He can say that Nazis are good people, and welcomes support from QAnon. He can label Latin American refugees seeking to cross the US border as non-existent "caravans of terrorists." He can ask his attorney general to interfere with the administration of justice. He can gas peaceful protesters outside the White House to make way for a Bible photo op, and send his goons to Portland OR to take innocent people off the streets. There is no end of his gaffes, and yet he suffers no loss of support for any of them.
The debate will cause no loss in Trump's poll numbers. He will keep at least 42%. He can make any gaffe, and even sound like he's half asleep, and it will make no difference to the followers of their dear leader Daddy. He lost three debates to Hillary, and hovered over her threateningly, and still won the electoral college. The best that can happen is that Biden picks up a point or two by reassuring a few undecided voters that is he up to the job.
Trump is a cult leader, an authoritarian tyrant with hypnotic power. If he wins, we go the way of Italy in the 1920s and 30s, whose dear leader promised to make his country great again.
We will need, when Trump is gone:
1. to expand the norm of education from K-12 to K-14 with a nearly-standardized program of liberal arts that includes at the least
economics (so that people at the least learn that there is no such thing as a free lunch)
philosophy (to learn formal logic and the connections of knowledge as well as tests of truth)
psychology (so that people thwart the dirty tricks of con artists of all kinds, including Trump-like demagogues)
statistics (to find criteria for making wise decisions based on numerical data)
comparative political systems (so people know what is wrong with undemocratic systems, and why body counts correlate to tyranny irrespective of the ideological raiment)
music appreciation (at the least, jazz, ragtime, folk, the blues, and above all classical so that people can have something to latch onto)
In case you don't think it important, this work
was once all it took to convince me to not commit suicide in a very bad time. Music with generic titles from a time long ago still speaks to the soul as Top-40 schlock does not.
art appreciation (rich kids go for this as a major... art defines people and civilization.
a foreign language, which can expand one's cultural universe.
comparative religion because there is no One Undeniable Truth except for mathematical and physical laws
and, of course, the usual freshmen composition, calculus for those ready for it, and of course literature.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.