Bursting Bubbles
It ain’t about personalities, people.
Seriously. I cannot count the number of times I’ve witnessed or participated in an argument about Trump vs. Biden where their relative mental competency has arisen. I even had one guy this morning ask derisively, “Didn’t he (Biden) fall off of a stationary bike?”
My answer was something to the effect of, “Hey, FDR couldn’t walk AT ALL. He had to use a wheelchair, yet, he was a four term President, and one of our more successful ones if you look at his record.”
In other words, one doesn’t THINK with your legs. Or with your inner ear’s balancing mechanism. Stuttering, if you ask the experts, also has squat to do with cognitive issues at all. Plenty of perfectly competent people stutter.
The issue is, this election has nothing to do with Biden or Trump’s mental competency, their ability to walk up or down ramps, read off a teleprompter, or, for that matter, fall off a damn bike, stationary or not.
All of that is taken care of, in the long run, by a good staff.
What DOES matter, however, is the Party behind the guy sitting in that Oval Office, whether he uses a wheelchair, crutches, or perfectly good legs to get around on.
Presidents have a vice president, whose only constitutional job is to be there prepared to take over the minute the president becomes incapable of doing his job. It’s always been that way, and humans, for thousands of years, have realized that to make bureaucracies work, you need a second in command. Our country is no different.
But today’s Republican Party, on the other hand, has openly abandoned the support they used to have for democracy. They support Authoritarianism. Openly, and apparently unashamed. Except, of course, where one of their number steps in shit like the Alabama Supreme Court overstepped the plan’s timing the other day.
(Damn judges, can’t they read the frigging timetable? That wasn’t supposed to happen for at least a couple of years! First Dobbs, now this, dammit!)
But fortunately for us, the Democrats still support democracy. And that, my friends, is what this election is about. Either, if not both Parties, could be running inmates from insane asylums, or just corpses in morgues, and none of that would matter in the least. Because when the top guy (or gal) becomes incapable of doing the job, another of their ilk will step up and take over. Same story, second verse.
Another distraction isn’t mental incompetence, it’s age. “OMG! Biden is over 80! Trump is almost 80! There oughta be an age limit!” With an unhealthy accompanying obsession with dementia tacked on.
Our government stopped enforcing an age limit with government employees years ago, and for good reason. Age, BY ITSELF, isn’t an indication of incompetency. A lot of perfectly mentally competent people die of old age every day. Again, that’s why we have a VP. My only reason for possibly supporting such a limit for the presidency is not about the ability to do the job, or to walk up and down ramps, but because of WHO they represent.
It’s their generation and what that teaches them about life. Each generation has its own lessons and its own outlook on life, and the Founders, by giving us a method for amending the Constitution, said explicitly that was because each generation should have the ability to make this country into something that works for THEM. For the new times they live in.
So, yes, from that standpoint, I could support an age limit — but only to allow subsequent generations their own chance to run this country THEIR way.
But again, this election isn’t about that.
It’s just about democracy and whether we want to keep ours.
Forget age.
Forget mobility.
Forget ramps.
Forget stutters.
None of that matters. Our democracy does.
Vote accordingly, vote BLUE!
