The American shambles

A short while ago, the US blog PowerLine linked to a short video of the Democrat's presidential candidate Joe Biden attempting and failing to get through a brief broadcast to his followers. Even without probing questions, it was a disaster.

That disaster, combined with all the other disasters that Biden leaves behind him whatever he does, brought PowerLine to the conclusion that, not only should Biden not become President, but that he can't: he is simply too demented now.

This statement is not political point scoring – those who have eyes to see and ears to hear surely have to accept that Biden is not just misspeaking or making the odd verbal blunder: he is suffering from mental decline, possibly dementia. Many of the plugs in the patch panel of his brain have fallen out and some of them have been reinserted in randomly different sockets.

The fair-minded also have to accept that his condition is unlikely to improve: in other words he will presumably be even more demented by November, when his campaign will have to cope with video compilations of his demented utterances over the last few years. In the unlikely event that he should win, he would be a President who was mentally incapacitated and whose government was run by his handlers.

The question now arises: is the other candidate, the incumbent President, sane enough to win the election and handle another four years in office? In the interests of fairness, this website has been generally supportive of Donald Trump. At the election he was not Hillary Clinton, which was a big plus. The tribes turned out for Hillary and – let's face it – she nearly won.

Immediately after the election Trump came under a Democrat-orchestrated campaign to find some 'Russian collusion' behind Trump's victory. The accusations were absurd at the moment they were invented and were still absurd when, after two years of ever wilder political dirt digging, they fizzled out for lack of any evidence whatsoever.

Then, after an absurd sideshow around the appointment of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the 'impeach Trump' campaign kicked off. There were no rational grounds for an impeachment of the President – in fact, what the grounds were for such a far-reaching political move is difficult to make out even now – and the impeachment process was anyway politically doomed in the Senate. Still, it made noise and headlines for a year.

During these media and political barrages, President Trump appeared to do some good things in spite of it all. His most notable defect seemed to be that he was useless at picking his staff – a great irony in view of his former role as Chief Hirer and Firer in The Apprentice US TV series.

But since the COVID-19 crisis struck he has been standing daily in front of the White House correspondent pack and has been extemporising wildly – to their great delight.

His long rambling monologues have revealed in great detail on camera all his weaknesses: the monumental ego of the great explainer, his lack of intellectual grip and lack of self-control – all decorated with those grating verbal and visual tics that are bad enough in two minute doses and intolerable over an hour or more.

He badly misjudged his role in the crisis. Instead of steadying words and calm, he has delivered upbeat, unscripted sales pitches that were not appropriate to the situation.

This was all expressed in stream of consciousness rambles that were really quite as deranged as Biden's chaotic utterances, just with more words.

Trump's opponents use the term insane to describe these monologues, but this term is incorrect. As far as we can tell, Trump is sane. But when we watch him we are experiencing a man at his intellectual limits who is having to cope with a mass of information that he cannot process. He has failed the political virus test and the six months from now until the election will be filled with clips of his nonsense.

It looks at the moment as though the USA will have a choice between Biden the Demented and Trump the Defective.

That in itself is bad enough, given that political tribalism and not reason will choose one or the other. But the question is still open as to whether Biden's dementia will even allow him to get as far as the election.

The Democrats may have to dump him after all, in which case who will they put up against Trump? All Biden's opponents during the primaries, with the exception of Bernie Sanders, attracted miserable levels of support. Is the party going to replace Joe with one of the single-digit rejected ones? And on what basis? Democracy in action – why bother with primaries? The media vultures now circling the Biden sex assault theme may be an early indicator of the window that will be used for his defenestration.

Joe promised to select a female for his Vice President – the female has yet to be chosen. Will he stand down and hand over to this person? She will then stand as the Democratic Party candidate in the election, turning the primary process into a farce. Democracy in action etc.?

The USA is in a mess, even its friends can see that. At the moment of writing, both candidates for the 2020 election are completely unsuitable for the office of President and the country faces a further four years of inevitable decline. True, no other modern country is a model in this respect: we have truly entered the era of democracy being the choice of the least worse hoping for the best.

Update 30.04.2020

A reader suggests that we global warming sceptics should keep our counsel when it comes to Donald Trump. He is, after all, the only major world leader who shares our scepticism to even the slightest degree: Après lui, le déluge. Long may he reign over us!