Re: <nettime> nettime-l Digest, Vol 9, Issue 6

[Francis Nowak via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

> For Biden, they've become a 24/7 noise
> machine about the supposed problem of his age, and their "legitimation" of
> that pseudo-issue has consumed their reporting

"Beer brew here is used to [unintelligible] to make the brew beer
[unintelligible] ooh earth rider thanks for the great Lakes" - Joe Biden,
2024. I mean, he's a pretty old guy, like a lot of the guys packing the
upper reaches of the US political scene. You remember Mitch McConnell
freezing mid-speech a while back? Or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died at the
wheel at age 87, leaving the Republicans with an absolute majority in the
Supreme Court, to the terrible detriment of women across America.

Trump's also pretty old (77 to Biden's 82), but I think he's lived a more
relaxed kind of life, and his general speaking style (remember Covfefe?)
makes a virtue out of unintelligibility, digression, left-field
interjection, as the relentless chaos-machine of Trump's subconscious
steers him through. You remember all those quotes you used to read from
Trump where he came across as unhinged? If you watch him speak, it's not so
much that he's mad, as it's just all ad-libs, off-the-cuff, like a slime
mold reaching out a tendril one way and the next, hoping he'll find
something.

For me, I don't get why anybody feels obligated to close ranks around
Biden. Nixon had it right: the whole mechanism of politics in a two-state
America is about who hates who. It is not a system where people vote for a
good candidate - it's a system where people vote for keeping the worse
candidate out. And that's why Biden is there in the first place: if the
electoral system strongly biased towards charismatic, competent candidates,
nobody could imagine Biden coming out on top. I mean, would he even be in
the top fifty percent of US citizens? Would Mitch McConnel? Would Nancy
Pelosi?

Practically, you have to hold your nose and vote for the guy, but do you
have to pretend you're voting *for* him? Half of the USA would vote for a
dog with mange if it was on the ballot, and it meant Trump wouldn't get in.
Half of the USA voted for *Trump*, so Clinton didn't get in.
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