I have to concur overall with the spirit of OP, though I think the fact that not being straightforward about the President's health has been such a thing for so very long, that fact ought to suggest something right there. There are forces at work to produce this outcome that are not easily countered. Not least of which is that we do not have an ideal electorate of rationally self-interested well-informed voters.
I really feel motivated to respond to the only-tangentially-related thing about whether FDR would really have used The Bomb had he been the one to OK the mission. I think that anyone who believes for a fraction of a second that there was ever any possibility that the Bomb would *not* be used, is profoundly delusional about politics. After the enormous resources that were dedicated to its making, to have a thing that could go "bang" and kill lots of Japanese and to not use it, that would have been thought treasonable by a great many Americans of the day.
I can only imagine what kind of hay the conservative Rs would have made of that story, after it inevitably came out. The Manhattan Project was not something that could be concealed from a hostile postwar audit.
More than politics. Critics gloss over the fact that the US and Japan were at what I've seen called "total war" a conflict where unconditional surrender is the only acceptable outcome. One of the things people who were in wars agree on is that War corrupts everything it touches, including the morality of fighting it. I think it's a category error to ask if it was right or wrong to drop 2 atomic bombs on Japan. Would it shorten the war, would it save American lives, become the only relevant questions. The political reality made not using the bomb unacceptable, but that was because war made using the bomb inevitable.
A lot of great stuff packed in this post. I know you don't want to go down the 2024 rathole, so I'll just say that to me, what powers all the Democratic resentment of Biden is a sense of betrayal, that he was supposed to protect us from Trump and failed. The irony of him doing the right thing, in the face of believing he was another indispensable man, is lost on those who blame him for Trump's win, since that has to be somebody's fault, not everyone's.
Thanks. I'm really more interested in the larger phenomenon of critics of Trump fixated on the idea of Somebody Else "saving" us from Trump. I consider the Biden So Old fad to be an instance of that. Hillary, Mueller, Comey, Garland, Smith, Biden, they're all vilified for not "stopping" Trump. Harris largely vanished from this pantheon, as if she, like the Republican Party, can't be expected to do anything about Trump, for very different reasons. The fact that Trump is only President thanks to the unconditional support of the Republican Party seems irrelevant to them. On that blessed day when Trump is gone, that party remains, and they will do it again given half a chance.
They certainly will do it again, if allowed -- and if it is hellaciously unpopular, they will seek votes to do it again by saying "But Trump was a one-off, we learned our lesson about excess and we're right as rain now!" Cue a dozen credulous/motivated NYT stories about the shiny new rehabilitated GOP.
They will try again, and they will get away with it again unless there is a revolution in Democratic leadership. For better and worse, the governance of America is in the hands of 2 political parties only answerable to an electorate that in general has no idea what they do. If the electorate is incapable of blocking Republican revolution, only the Democratic party stands in their way.
There is an enormous blind spot in all the commentary I read on politics of the idea that a large percentage of people who bother to vote have a hazy grasp on how government works and what it does. You would think this might have some bearing on how to interpret polls on opinions about policy, especially polls that show voters taking contradictory positions based on how questions are formed. The idea that voters simply don't understand is the simplest explanation for those polls and the random nature of voting outcomes that contradict self-interest and lived experience.
It wouldn't have been his best work, but I can't shake the impression that Biden would have been competent to governing—especially grading on the Trump curve—until now…but not up to campaigning. The different requirements between the two is a real weak-point for democracy….
Beside helping to make Trump the U.S. President again, the mis-handling (and -noticing) of Biden's decline now will make it nigh-impossible to make Trump's own decline an issue, (exaggerating) even should he die on live television…on the other hand, Trump's corpse might be less dangerous to the world than the living, Moldbug-fanboi, Vance.
Seems to me TV news is more interested in "let's you and him fight" than in providing voters with information about how their government works -- so we need a highly energetic executive in the bully pulpit to clobber people with the facts. Biden couldn't do it, but not because of dementia or anything else that got "covered up." He was just old, from day 1. I mean gosh, imagine if we had the 2008 barn-burner Biden in the White House in 2021-2024, selling what he was doing every day! He'd have been unstoppable. I don't think he would have signed more or better acts. Just would have been loved better for what he did do -- so I agree with you, if I understand you correctly.
In a world where Republicans simply invent scandal out of whole cloth with no bad consequences, there's no way to not mis-handle Biden's apparant decline. And apparant is the critical word. However anyone remotely diagnoses Biden, any physical manifestation of weakness will be pitched as cognitive because it makes a better story independent of ratfucking intent. It's baked into the system and Biden was forced to accept it once it was made real by being seen on tv.
I have to concur overall with the spirit of OP, though I think the fact that not being straightforward about the President's health has been such a thing for so very long, that fact ought to suggest something right there. There are forces at work to produce this outcome that are not easily countered. Not least of which is that we do not have an ideal electorate of rationally self-interested well-informed voters.
I really feel motivated to respond to the only-tangentially-related thing about whether FDR would really have used The Bomb had he been the one to OK the mission. I think that anyone who believes for a fraction of a second that there was ever any possibility that the Bomb would *not* be used, is profoundly delusional about politics. After the enormous resources that were dedicated to its making, to have a thing that could go "bang" and kill lots of Japanese and to not use it, that would have been thought treasonable by a great many Americans of the day.
I can only imagine what kind of hay the conservative Rs would have made of that story, after it inevitably came out. The Manhattan Project was not something that could be concealed from a hostile postwar audit.
Absolutely on the inevitability of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki strikes
Yup.
More than politics. Critics gloss over the fact that the US and Japan were at what I've seen called "total war" a conflict where unconditional surrender is the only acceptable outcome. One of the things people who were in wars agree on is that War corrupts everything it touches, including the morality of fighting it. I think it's a category error to ask if it was right or wrong to drop 2 atomic bombs on Japan. Would it shorten the war, would it save American lives, become the only relevant questions. The political reality made not using the bomb unacceptable, but that was because war made using the bomb inevitable.
And yup.
A lot of great stuff packed in this post. I know you don't want to go down the 2024 rathole, so I'll just say that to me, what powers all the Democratic resentment of Biden is a sense of betrayal, that he was supposed to protect us from Trump and failed. The irony of him doing the right thing, in the face of believing he was another indispensable man, is lost on those who blame him for Trump's win, since that has to be somebody's fault, not everyone's.
Thanks. I had to keep stopping myself from writing about 2024, but it's OK for you to.
Thanks. I'm really more interested in the larger phenomenon of critics of Trump fixated on the idea of Somebody Else "saving" us from Trump. I consider the Biden So Old fad to be an instance of that. Hillary, Mueller, Comey, Garland, Smith, Biden, they're all vilified for not "stopping" Trump. Harris largely vanished from this pantheon, as if she, like the Republican Party, can't be expected to do anything about Trump, for very different reasons. The fact that Trump is only President thanks to the unconditional support of the Republican Party seems irrelevant to them. On that blessed day when Trump is gone, that party remains, and they will do it again given half a chance.
They certainly will do it again, if allowed -- and if it is hellaciously unpopular, they will seek votes to do it again by saying "But Trump was a one-off, we learned our lesson about excess and we're right as rain now!" Cue a dozen credulous/motivated NYT stories about the shiny new rehabilitated GOP.
Driftglass is definitive on this subject.
https://driftglass.blogspot.com/2010/09/now-bush-belly-sneetches.html
They will try again, and they will get away with it again unless there is a revolution in Democratic leadership. For better and worse, the governance of America is in the hands of 2 political parties only answerable to an electorate that in general has no idea what they do. If the electorate is incapable of blocking Republican revolution, only the Democratic party stands in their way.
Wow, that was fun/depressing. And yes x100 to “an electorate that has no idea what they do.”
Fun/depressing is the Driftglass brand.
There is an enormous blind spot in all the commentary I read on politics of the idea that a large percentage of people who bother to vote have a hazy grasp on how government works and what it does. You would think this might have some bearing on how to interpret polls on opinions about policy, especially polls that show voters taking contradictory positions based on how questions are formed. The idea that voters simply don't understand is the simplest explanation for those polls and the random nature of voting outcomes that contradict self-interest and lived experience.
It wouldn't have been his best work, but I can't shake the impression that Biden would have been competent to governing—especially grading on the Trump curve—until now…but not up to campaigning. The different requirements between the two is a real weak-point for democracy….
Beside helping to make Trump the U.S. President again, the mis-handling (and -noticing) of Biden's decline now will make it nigh-impossible to make Trump's own decline an issue, (exaggerating) even should he die on live television…on the other hand, Trump's corpse might be less dangerous to the world than the living, Moldbug-fanboi, Vance.
Seems to me TV news is more interested in "let's you and him fight" than in providing voters with information about how their government works -- so we need a highly energetic executive in the bully pulpit to clobber people with the facts. Biden couldn't do it, but not because of dementia or anything else that got "covered up." He was just old, from day 1. I mean gosh, imagine if we had the 2008 barn-burner Biden in the White House in 2021-2024, selling what he was doing every day! He'd have been unstoppable. I don't think he would have signed more or better acts. Just would have been loved better for what he did do -- so I agree with you, if I understand you correctly.
In a world where Republicans simply invent scandal out of whole cloth with no bad consequences, there's no way to not mis-handle Biden's apparant decline. And apparant is the critical word. However anyone remotely diagnoses Biden, any physical manifestation of weakness will be pitched as cognitive because it makes a better story independent of ratfucking intent. It's baked into the system and Biden was forced to accept it once it was made real by being seen on tv.