By John Corderman
The Presidential Election of 2024 changed on June 27 at the first debate, when President Biden demonstrated his cognitive decline for all to see such that no objective watcher could deny it. The President then spent the next three weeks reinforcing the fact of his cognitive decline culminating in his withdrawal from the Presidential race on July 21st and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for the job.
Within 48 hours, Vice President Harris solidified Democrat support assuring her nomination.
Interestingly, Vice President Harris had heretofore been viewed by most people (including Democrats) as an ineffectual Vice President and certainly not a contender nor a strong candidate for the Presidency—in the past, or in the future. But, here we are.
As usual, most people are missing the obvious. If President Biden was cognitively unable to be an effective candidate, then how is it that he’s cognitively capable of presiding as President for another six months?
Some of us asked that question after the June debate and in the three weeks leading up to his stepping down from the campaign, but since that was, and continues to be, anti-official-narrative, the issue and related questions have disappeared.
It’s the same thing that happened regarding mask mandates (and many other issues) during the COVID-hype: anybody who was anti-mask-narrative was ridiculed and mainstream public discussion on the issue was forbidden and hidden.
In the Trump/Harris debate on September 10, Trump made the mistake of not looking the Vice President in the eyes, while Vice President Harris gave back Trump some of his own past techniques with her mocking and smug facial expressions when he spoke as seen on the split-screen. Actual issue substance was, as we’ve all come to expect, pretty non-existent, and so Vice President Harris won by technique of hand-under-chin-head-shaking-smiling mockery and dismissal.
Harris has been pushing for a second debate and Trump continues to say, no. Generally, I’m for more debates than fewer, but at this juncture and especially within the context of the 2024 Presidential Election, I believe more debates are a waste of everybody’s time because we’ve already entered the two-month voting cycle process and as for the people who will cast a vote, those minds are made up.
The notion of there being a large “undecided” voting block in this country in this election seems absurd on its face.
What this election has come down to is a race between a sitting Vice President who advocates openly for policies (particularly economic) to the left of even Bernie Sanders, and a former President of the United States that has a three- year factual track record of policies (particularly economic) that are well known and were largely successful—all the way up until he got rolled by the official pseudo-experts on Covid and shut-down a booming economy.
The old adage of James Carville (which is usually correct) that “it’s the economy, stupid” appears not to be operative during this election cycle.
This election is not going to be decided on any array of standard issues like immigration, foreign policy, inflation, overall economy, abortion or anything else.
This election is going to come down to how many voters (who actually cast a ballot) suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and how many voters are able to bring their actual critical thinking skills to bear in a manner of objectively comparing the professed policies of one candidate versus the actual track-record of policies of the other.
I remain skeptical that there are enough votes to elect Donald Trump to a second term, because I think critical thinking ability is in very short supply in our nation and this (in turn) is primarily because to have a functioning critical thinking ability, one must have a working memory of experiences that date back (at least) all through one’s adult life, as opposed to a memory that perhaps only dates back to the last Netflix series one binged-watched.
Also, to have a functioning critical thinking ability, one must have (at least) the basic courage to be skeptical of official narratives and to not fear expressing dissent on something even if that puts you alone in a corner for a time. This was once called: the courage of one’s convictions. But the healthy practice of skepticism and dissent (especially against the largely demonstrably false official narratives of all levels of government and their chosen media loudspeakers) is a rapidly deteriorating trait of the American people.
The average American seems largely fearful of going “against the grain” of whatever the reigning groupthink happens to be and tend to feel guilty when they think something at variance with the groupthink because they think something is wrong with themselves for being out of step. One could say that this type of person has willingly shut-off their instincts about things—their sixth-sense.
One could say that Memory and Skepticism are the parents of that brilliant child called Critical Thinking.
This election is nothing more than the most basic test of the remaining level of American’s critical thinking abilities.
I understand that many people will resent me for putting it in those terms, but regardless of candidate personalities, and the other distasteful attributes of
these two candidates, an actual critical thinker’s ability to weigh them in terms of policy, experience, and accomplishments in life, and ability to lead—the best choice for the nation could not be more stark.
Having said that, my own position hasn’t changed since August 2023. I would cast a vote for Trump for a third time, except that I cannot forget how badly he got rolled on COVID and how badly that harmed our nation, and he has yet to even offer an apologetic reflection. He lost me there.
I say “no” to either of them.
John Corderman is an Acquisition Analyst with Custom Transaction Services in Phoenix, Arizona.
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