I was in Mexico City with my family in the early 1980s, and our tour guide took us to see a bullfight. My grandfather was absolutely thrilled at the idea, even if it wasn't the professional season and we were going to the smaller stadium to see the minor league matadors. In the main event, a young, confident man in the full matador regalia came out to the polite applause of the crowd, and he seemed ready for his big debut. When the bull was released, it was obvious that it had a bull's agenda. The matador danced around awkwardly and waved the cape, with the bull charging and mostly missing. A few times, the bull knocked the matador to the ground, and he got up, dirtier and wobblier each time. The picadors came out on their horses and lanced the bull, as is the custom. Finally, it was time for the big moment, when the matador would kill the bull. He was plunging banderillas, the long spikes with flags on them, into the bull, but it wouldn't slow down. The matador wasn't doing it right, and the bull was bleeding, suffering, even more than usual. The crowd realized it was watching a shit show of a bullfight, a cruel and horrific "sport" becoming even too cruel for them, and we started to boo the matador, who became even more flustered. After a long while, the bull finally had bled enough to be manageable. The matador was given a sword and essentially stabbed and hacked until the poor bull finally died. The crowd was split between outraged cries and stunned silence as the embarrassed matador took a bow. And then, it being amateur night, instead of horses coming out to ceremoniously pull the bull through the gates, the dead beast was chained to the back of a beat-up Volkswagen Beetle and dragged through the mud, into the bowels of the stadium while a tinny speaker played mariachi music.
We all felt filthy and disgusted and ashamed to have witnessed a spectacle that degraded humanity. We were all diminished by the experience. I was too young for tequila, but, goddamn, I drank tequila that night.
You can take the story as a more direct metaphor for last night's presidential debate, but, for me, it's about the feeling that the debate gave me, the triggering of disgust and shame that I was in any way part of it, the way I know it will cast a shadow on American electoral politics for ages. Oh, we had a whole lot of great experiences on that Mexico trip, but I remember the bullfight debacle more than any other.
When it comes to last night, no one is going to remember that Democratic candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden actually laid out plans for his presidency when he could get in more than a few words without being interrupted. Biden said what he'd do to get the nation through the pandemic and what he'd do to help businesses and schools reopen safely after we've finally gotten on the path to recovery. He said he'd get rid of Trump's tax cut for the wealthy. Biden talked about infrastructure spending and creating more jobs while moving the country to greener energy (and how that would create jobs, which is so obvious that it's maddening that this has to be explained). Biden talked about immediate steps he could take to mitigate the Godzilla of climate change that's going to wreck us. Biden talked about addressing racism and white privilege and police brutality.
Biden was the only one of the two candidates to actually utter the word "future," as if he could see beyond his immediate animal needs, unlike President and business failure Donald Trump.
Trump didn't offer a single idea for his second term. Not one. He said he'll have plans in the indeterminate future, but he didn't tell you one thing that he aspires to do for the country because his only aspiration is to stay in power.
But we won't remember any of this because, as is his way, Trump was a fucking tsunami of lies and accusations and conspiracy theories. And he just wouldn't stop. It was like going to an orgy and there's one guy who has done too much cocaine after downing Viagra and he just runs around with his half-hard microdick, frantically fucking any available hole but never able to cum because even the dog is rejecting his desperate humping. Christ, will someone throw this asshole out so the rest of us can enjoy the evening?
You've heard plenty about Trump refusing to condemn white supremacists. But what's being missed is that moderating wet noodle Chris Wallace actually fed him the line he should have said. Wallace asked Trump, "Are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia group and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities?" And Trump couldn't even bring himself to say that about the neo-Nazi Proud Boys, instead saying the now-infamous "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by" before immediately pivoting to attacking left-wing protesters. It was appalling but of a piece with who Trump is and who supports Trump. The Proud Boys themselves were thrilled.
Then there was the moment that Trump dismissed Biden's son, Beau, a decorated Iraq War veteran and state Attorney General who died of cancer. Biden was using Beau's example to attack Trump's disdain for the military, yes, but Trump couldn't pause his narcissistic bullshit for one moment to offer even a second of sympathy, to say, "I'm sorry about your loss but here's what I do for veterans" or anything that a normal, relatively sane human being might do. Instead, Trump barreled over Biden, saying, "I don’t know Beau. I know Hunter. Hunter got thrown out of the military. He was thrown out dishonorably discharged." (He was administratively discharged, which is very different and also shows how Trump understands jackshit about the military.)
In one moment, Trump swept aside Biden's mourning for his deceased child and attacked his other son for a cocaine addiction. That's some evil shit right there. It's inhuman, it's amoral, it's fucked up beyond fucked up, and that's for an average person. If you were sitting in a bar and did that shit, you'd deserve to get your ass kicked and no one would help you. But that's the motherfucking president, and to react to it without that in mind is to not understand the full, debased horror of it. Honestly, I wouldn't have been all that shocked if Trump had followed up by mocking Biden's daughter and first wife who were killed in an auto accident. And Trump cared more about Hunter Biden's income than he cared about the victims of coronavirus.
Trump's purpose was to turn the left against Biden and to depress turnout. Frankly, his attacks were just fucking weird and contradictory. He kept shouting incoherently that Biden is a "socialist" and then that Biden is going to "lose his radical left supporters." Which is it? He said that the 1994 crime bill Biden sponsored put people in prison but that Biden couldn't even say "law and order." Huh? For the record, deep flaws aside, a whole lot of cops owe their careers to Biden and the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act because part of it was to hire 100,000 more police officers, something Biden should perhaps emphasize.
Trump's rant about mail-in ballots was so unhinged that it was like doom scrolling through a deranged right-wing Twitter feed. Every single allegation Trump put out there, from the nine ballots in Pennsylvania to the West Virginia ballots to "they found them in creeks," is pure conservative fuckery. We know Trump trusts Fox "news" and Breitbart more than he trusts his own fucking intelligence and law enforcement agencies, but it will always be fucked up to me that he just makes these accusations without anyone being arrested or charged with a crime. Like with his taxes, with his mythical health plan, with everything, you have to believe him and nothing else. All reality must be viewed through him.
If Biden seemed inefficient in his counter-attacks on Trump (although he got in a number of good blows), it's because Biden's face said it all. Between bemused smiles and smirks at what a goddamn baby Trump is and the occasional look of "What the fuck is he talking about?" or "How the fuck do you respond to a flaming sow that belches lies without shame?" Biden expressed the feeling of disbelief we all have that this grotesquery, this whining worm of a man, this orange, sweaty dick is our president. Frankly, if Biden could take that from Trump without losing his shit, he can handle any dictator in the world.
Like all of us, I'll bet Biden felt filthy having to stand there and endure it. But he fucked up the right's narrative about him as a senile old man just by doing it. And they are going to be frantic to turn Trump's shitpile of a performance into a mountain of stinking gold.
There is no reason to have any more of these debates. They will tell us nothing that wasn't absolutely clear before. If you believe that Donald Trump gives a shit about you after last night, you are lost and you can go fuck yourself into oblivion. Let's just hope you don't fuck the rest of us.
