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I am heartsick at the spiraling anxiety, and angry at the own-goals.  This madness needs to stop – if not in the media, then at least in Balloon Juice threads that I put up.

So until something changes, this will be my last post related to “Biden, will he or won’t he, should he or shouldn’t he”.

We are wasting so much time and energy on this, at a time when there is so much work to be done. There is so much work to be done.  So much work, and so little time.

I’m sure there will still be plenty of Balloon Juice threads where anyone who wants to can continue to endlessly hash this out, with both sides endlessly repeating the same things, over and over, sincere people and trolls, alike.  But I’m done.  And I’m pretty sure the other side is laughing.

I am saying ENOUGH.  Please, not in the comments of my future posts.  

If you don’t like that, and you want to skip my posts, I’m okay with that.

Balloon Juice is my on-line home, and I need a safe space on Balloon Juice to talk with, and work with, my internet friends and not feel like my head is going to explode.  And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who feels that way.  When times are hard, we need our friends.  We need our allies.  We are stronger together, and it feels like this is tearing us apart.

So, here’s one last post from me – outsourced to Eolirin – where we can hash this out all day long, if you like.

Eolirin, written on July 6

Also, not to you specifically, but to everyone.

I just want to say, it is deeply fucking infuriating to me that we are in a political crisis for what is the effective equivalent of the press going “Don’t you think she looks tired?”

Even our new ditch Biden advocate isn’t complaining about a cognitive issue, they’re complaining that he looks and sounds feeble. At least some of the commentary post debate was about him struggling to finish sentences and losing his train of thought in that first 20 minutes, which can lead to some good faith questions about his ability to do the job. But the events and the interview show that that’s not actually an issue.

He’s not showing signs of dementia or cognitive failure. And people (who aren’t right wing propagandists) aren’t pushing that anymore. So now it’s all, well he’s still old and he looks old and that’s disqualifying.

We’ve got his opponent over here going off into bizarre tangents about sharks and electrocution from batteries, inbetween saying racist ass shit and promising to round up millions of brown people, and seek vengeance against everyone who’s wronged him and we’ve got people obsessing about whether someone seems feeble nevermind what they’re capable of actually doing, and this is getting enough oxygen that it feels like it has some chance of getting Biden to step aside, at least enough that he’s having to come out to say that he isn’t, over and over again? What the fucking fuck is wrong with everyone?

And so we’re moving through a political crisis because of that, that could help hand an election to a fascist with an explicit set of plans and now a preemptive okay from the supreme court to remake our government into a dictatorship.

And we’re not taking about that.

Because we’re too busy being concerned about how feeble his opponent might seem. Not that he has health problems. Not that there’s an actual issue with his ability to carry out his responsibilities. Pure fucking optics. You can’t fucking fix it because there’s nothing objective to disprove, and the goal posts on “old” are super simple to move around.

This is 100% the same as the crooked smear on Hillary.

Since there were no crimes anyone could ever actually point to there was no way to refute it. No one’s actually concerned with any kind of specific on how Biden’s visible age might affect his ability to do this job, so there’s no way to refute that it’s an issue.

You show how one specific isn’t a problem, people will move to another hypothetical and then it’s some future thing or vauge vibes and there’s nothing you can do with that. Especially when no one is willing to accept the pivot back to, THE FELON IS PROMISING TO GO FULL NAZI AND ROUND UP PEOPLE TO PUT IN CAMPS IF ELECTED, WHY DOES THIS EVEN MATTER?

This entire moment is a fucking indictment of not just our media, which is by far the worst offender, but also of our entire fucking society for being this fucking shallow and this fucking stupid, to the point that we may be literally too fucking stupid to continue to exist as a country or as a species.

I cannot fucking even.

Addendum, written on 7/17:

I want to provide a little bit of additional context here, because I’m not really interested in engaging in an argument about polling or whether dumping Biden is the better play. This isn’t about whether Biden should stay in or not.

Even if Biden is forced to step down here, even if he chooses to do that, even if it’s the right thing for him to do, everything about this is fucking stupid.

To the extent that there is a real issue here it’s that the American people can’t be trusted to make decisions based on substance, even in matters that are existentially threatening to them.

And I’ll note, that’s also the thesis of anyone wanting Harris. (I’m going to ignore the arguments from anyone calling for an open convention, because they’re stupid arguments.) Substance is irrelevant, truth doesn’t matter, Biden looks too old and feeble to be able to beat Trump, Trump’s negatives, despite being what they are aren’t similarly disqualifying, so if this doesn’t happen Trump will win, and if it’s Harris, we may have a better chance. That’s the argument for Harris. It’s the only good faith one. I’m willing to grant that most people here and elsewhere are making it in good faith.

I’m not going to say if that’s reasonable or not, because I don’t think it matters. Biden has to choose to step down for it to happen. And I think elected Democratic officials publicly calling on him to do that aren’t helping the overall cause of beating Trump. But Biden can do that if he feels he should, and if people want to lobby him in private, that’s fine. Shrug.

But still, the core of that line of reasoning, the thing that makes it make any sense, is an assumption that the American people (or at least the part of the electorate that’s going to decide the election) are fucking shallow, stupid halfwits who can’t see Hitler coming when he’s standing there with a megaphone going “It’s me Hitler!” (and yes I’m aware that the reason why things are even close enough for any of this to matter is because way too many Americans are pro-Hitler. That’s also a problem)

That’s more of a indictment of the fucking electorate, our media, and our country than it is of Biden, whatever faults you may feel he has. Everyone looking to dump him is even more forcefully making my point just by holding that position. Especially if they’re right!

Again, everything about this is fucking stupid.

THE END.

This Will Be the Last Word on This from Me, and I’m (mostly) Outsourcing it to EolirinPost + Comments (248)