Jennifer Mercieca notes that right-wing authoritarian voters need an Übermensch who can shield them from dealing with complexity. And this is why they run Biden down for being old:
"If you wonder why they're always running down Biden for being old, for being, you know, mentally incompetent and not as physically strong as Donald Trump or mentally strong."
"All of those comparisons are made because they want to say that Biden is a beta, and that Trump is an alpha... That he's a strongman Übermensch and he, as the strongman, will become dictator in order to affect the MAGA agenda."
"Biden's brain is aging. Trump's brain is dementing.
'Phonemic paraphasias' —the substitution of non-words for words that sound similar—are not normally seen until a patient enters the moderate to severe stages of Alzheimer’s.
Some examples of Trump’s non-words: Beneficiaries becomes 'benefishes.' Renovations become 'renoversh.' Pivotal became 'pivobal.'"
"Obama became 'obamna.' Missiles became 'mishiz.' Christmas became 'Crissus.' Bipartisan became 'bipars.' …
Trump also engages in what we call ;tangential speech.' He just becomes incomprehensible when he engages in free association word salad speech that is all over the place. Again, that's a sign of real brain damage, not being old, not being slow, not losing a step not being, but of severe cognitive deterioration."
"What I don’t understand is why those clips aren’t replayed over and over in the mainstream media. Isn’t Trump babbling incoherently the most newsworthy part of his rally? You can be sure it would be if it were Biden."
Lawrence O'Donnell tells it like it. As he notes, the folks blathering on about dumping Joe Biden (and, as he notes, by inference Kamala Harris) seem oblivious to the wishes of the constituency that delivered the White House to them — Black women.
O'Donnell puts his finger on something important here. I routinely get folks dropping taunting comments into my feed here about Biden being too old or dull or inactive.
Those folks are ALMOST ALWAYS young, privileged white folks. They have the privilege of white skin and secure economic status.
Their lives are not on the line in the same way that the lives of vulnerable people are on the line if they succeed in placing Donald Trump in the White House by their nonsense.
And as they pretend that Biden and the Democrats are the problem, there are Trumps and the Republicans looming over their future and their children's future.
Robert Reich polled his readers yesterday to ask if they think Biden should step aside (a la Ezra Klein) and let someone else run, because Biden's "old."
Today, Reich reports that he was surprised at the response: 57% said no, Biden's the best candidate and should run.
Reich himself does not think Biden's too old and should step down, by the way.
"I'm astonished at all the idiots that think Biden stepping down is a viable alternative. His age does not fucking matter — keeping the US from becoming a fascist dictatorship is what is important. It’s another form of 'both sidsing' the two candidates. If Biden loses in November, the blame will lie, in part, at the feet of the idiot Democrats that think that there is a chance anyone else can beat Herr Pumpkinfuhrer."
"American newspapers instruct us that Biden is old. If he’s old (goes the thinking), he must be weak; and if he is weak, then we are permitted to give up. But Biden is not weak. He is not running away from prison, or from anything else. He does not act from fear. He gets work done. His record is one of the strongest in the history of the American presidency."
Pulitzer-winning Marilynne Robinson on Biden's age and the ageism of American culture in general:
"You have to live to be 80 to find this out: Anybody under 50 feels they’re in a position to condescend to you. You get boxed into this position where people who deal with you are making assumptions about your intellect. It’s very disturbing."
"Most people my age are just fine. What can I say? It’s a kind of good fortune that America is categorically incapable of accepting: that someone with a strong institutional memory, who knows how things are supposed to work, who was habituated to their appropriate functioning is president. I consider him a gift of God. All 81 years of him."
"The stakes are simply too high to just laugh away the fact that one old man wants to protect our democracy, the other wants to attack it; that one old man wants to defend women’s rights, the other wants to eliminate them;" (continued in /2)
"that one old man wants to protect our environment, the other wants to poison it; that one old man stands with Putin and against our allies, the other loathes Russia’s murdering dictator and protects our friends."
"Hur’s description of Biden as 'well-meaning' has generally been ignored or interpreted as a condescending pat on the head. But in an election against Trump, it’s deadly serious. The special counsel investigations have found that while Biden acted with good intentions, Trump acted with bad intentions. And that’s why Trump, not Biden, got indicted."
"This was flanked, on the opinion side, by the Times editorial board weighing in with 'The Challenges of an Aging President,' Bret Stephens declaring 'Democrats Can No Longer Stay Silent About Biden,' Maureen Dowd demanding 'Mr. President, Ditch the Stealth About Health,' and Ross Douthat adding 'The Question Is Not If Biden Should Step Aside. It’s How.'"
This is called manufacturing news while pretending to report it — a NYTimes speciality.
"Within about 48 hours of the Hur Report’s release, the New York Times news coverage included prominently placed pieces titled 'Special Counsel’s Report Puts Biden’s Age and Memory in the Spotlight,' 'Biden Cleared in Documents Case; Report Raises Concerns About His Memory,' and 'How Old Is Too Old to Be President? An Uncomfortable Question Arises Again.'”
Mr. Biden is the same age as Harrison Ford, Paul McCartney and Martin Scorsese. He’s also a bit younger than Jane Fonda (86) and a lot younger than the Berkshire Hathaway C.E.O., Warren Buffett (93). All these individuals are considered to be at the top of their professions, and yet I would not be surprised if they are more forgetful and absent-minded than when they were younger. In other words, an individual’s age does not say anything definitive about the person’s cognitive status or where it will head in the near future. — Dr Charan Ranganath #quotes#quote#Biden#age#Leadership#Competence#Unity#uspolitics#politics
“If you think old and sometimes forgetful is worse than or equal to old, sometimes forgetful, corrupt, bigoted, anti-democracy, criminal, serially lying, and encouraging political violence, or that these things deserve approximately equal attention, that’s nuts.”
"[Turning the Hur report into a media freakout] required deploying multiple reporting teams, an investment of resources reserved for only the most consequential stories. Much of it what they produced was presented not only with the cowardly use of the passive voice ('Questions are being raised'), but with a willful lack of self-awareness of the self-fulfilling prophecies at work."
So why did this happen? There are a number of reasons, the most important of which is that nothing attracts journalists more than a piece of news that reinforces something they already believe. …
Hur’s report gave news organizations a peg on which to hang stories that expressed their own belief that Biden is too old to be president."
Once again: and Trump is HOW MANY years younger than Biden? And he's made HOW MANY gaffes, with no media freakout?