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‘We deserve better - America in 2020 is a raging bin fire’Comment & OpinionPoliticsSep 30‘HORROR SHOW’: The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe BidenBy Russ LittenThe first televised debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden made for difficult and depressing viewing.Nobody will have tuned in expecting to see a nuanced exchange of views conducted in a collegiate atmosphere.Four years of Trump bombast has battered political commentators and concerned citizens alike to a desensitised pulp. From a modern perspective, Watergate, the Iran-Contra Affair, and the sexual indiscretions of Bill Clinton, seem, in comparison, like old re-runs of Happy Days. I very nearly didn’t watch it myself. I knew from the first snippets of Twitter the morning after that it was a horror show. I disengaged myself from politics after the last UK election for the sake of my physical and mental health, and the cold hard realisation that my beliefs and ideals were, in the grand scheme of things, about as popular as a black and white hooped jersey down Holderness Road.We live in a climate where values such as compassion and community are pretty far down on the governmental totem pole. We have been conditioned to equate decency and kindness with weakness.‘I’m just glad I don’t live there, in the same way I’m glad I don’t live in North Korea or Palestine’We’ve got enough going on with our own crew of incompetents over here. Why should I, a UK citizen, care about the raging bin fire that is 2020 America? Why should I care about a country that loves guns more than refugee children, that places the stock market on a higher pedestal than the health of its own citizens? I’m just glad I don’t live there, in the same way I’m glad I don’t live in North Korea or Palestine. But I did watch it. Does the time-honoured idea of America sneezing and the rest of the world catching a cold still hold any truth from a modern perspective?In terms of power, expansion and influence, the 19th century belonged to Europe, the 20th century saw the rise of the American Empire, and now it seems the 21st Century will belong to Asia - or more specifically, China.America used to command respect, most of it not healthy. But right now it feels like America is going through the death rattles and hawking up tidal waves of bile phlegm - and the entire planet is suffocating beneath a thick veil of mucus.Ravaged by Covid and with an incompetent narcissist at the helm, America now seems to be slipping into a near state of disrepair, but with all its autocratic instincts and sense of entitlement still intact. A third world nation with a first world narrative, as some have said.With every public mass shooting and every black citizen murdered by the police, America is becoming more and more grotesque, a relentless horror show of Reality TV. A drunken toddler running around with a gun in its sticky fat paw.So - to the debate itself. Two pensioners talking over each other, one snarled on uppers, the other seemingly lost in chuckling reverie.‘The mainstream media look at Trump in the same way an alcoholic looks at a bottle of whiskey; they know it will kill them but they can’t resist another slurp’Let’s start with Trump, the media’s favourite. Because make no mistake, however much people such as CNN ad The New York Times like to paint Trump as the Devil incarnate, in reality they love the very bones of him. The mainstream media looks at Donald Trump the same way an alcoholic looks at a bottle of whiskey. They know it will kill them in the end, but they can’t resist just one more slurp. To be fair, it’s hard to imagine that a more repulsive human being than Donald Trump could ever have existed. More than anyone, he reminds me of Jimmy Savile. A man untroubled by decency or the truth, a fondness for showboating, and a deep brazen belief that he is entitled to do and say anything he likes because he has somehow found himself sitting on a golden throne.In the debate, Trump’s constant interruptions, hectoring, insults and hyperbole rendered the entire thing redundant from about the fourth minute.Trump was like the pupil who couldn’t be bothered to do his homework, but turned up anyway and threw stink bombs around before complaining about the smell. The former pretend business man off the TV is very good at reducing complex issues to simplistic, brutal soundbites, fairground barker style.It’s often hard to not admire some of the things he says, until you remember that virtually everything he says is actually a complete lie. The core problem with this candidate, among many, is on the subject of race. Trump is a racist and a white supremacist. He’s not even trying to hide it. His Proud Boy call-out was not so much a dog whistle as an air-raid siren. Like all racists, he views any attempt at redressing historical imbalance as a personal affront.‘Joe Biden looked like the ghost of Stan Laurel’As for Joe Biden, he smiles too much. This is not the energy I want to see in a man fighting off fascism. I understand that smiling inanely is the sign that a stressful situation is being made bearable, but it had the effect of making him look like the ghost of Stan Laurel.More effective was his Biden Down The Barrel move - ignoring the incessant yawping from his opponent, and staring straight down the TV lens, appealing to the folks at home, like some avuncular President from a bygone era, a simpler, more straightforward time.But such moments of sentimental indulgence were rare. The full 90-minute experience felt like an extended Director’s Cut of The Sunshine Boys, the film with Walter Matthau and George Burns, but if one of them was a psychotic Nazi and the other had overdone it on the Valium.At one point they bickered about who played the most golf. American politics has become a care home for the criminally insane and the woefully incompetent. What we saw here was two bewildered residents up past their bedtime. So who won this first debate? The short answer is the media. There was enough horror and outrage on show here to fill a thousand columns and keep a hundred talking heads yapping. Everyone else on the planet lost, dismally.‘The American Constitution was one of the most beautiful ideas ever dreamed up, but it’s been hijacked by psycopaths’America and the rest of the world deserves better than this Statler and Waldorf act. The true tragedy is that the American Constitution is one of the most beautiful ideas ever dreamed up, and it has been hijacked and distorted by psychopaths.It seems the world really does move in gyres, and we are once again whirl-pooling down into a cesspit of fascism. I hope I live long enough to see it battered down again. I hope that happens, to some effect, in November.In the meantime, do not adjust your TV sets. That blinding orange light you see is not the aliens beaming down to save us. It’s the sight of America burning on a hundred million screens.
