Before we delve into the high and lowlights of this predictable debate, let me clarify that voting is a precious and important part of what we all consider a democratic right, and having choice is integral to the idea of “freedom.” That’s why in the US you only have two choices that are almost the same. That’s how it works, right? One is a blue curaçao cocktail, the other is a cranberry margarita, and both will eventually make your head spin, push your gag reflexes to the limit, and knock you out cold. As is always the case, team blue claimed it won, and team red said something about eating pets and distancing itself from JD Vance.
High and lowlights for me included:
- According to Trump, Biden has a 4-sentence plan that Harris is copying, and it’s based on the classic book Run, Spot, Run. “Take a look at her plan. She doesn’t have a plan.”
- Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, are basically the new Riggs and Murtaugh of DC because they’re gun owners.
- Harris’ “girl, what?” face was unstoppable.
- Trump is actually pleased that Harris is Black and doesn’t really care either way.
- Trump had more zingers than people will give him credit for, particularly the “I’m talking now, if you don’t mind, please” line that he weaponized against a Harris interruption—a callback to a line she used in a 2020 debate with Mike Pence.
- The classic 80s cartoon movie American Tale lied to me about there being “no cats in America,” since I now have confirmation that there are, thanks to Trump peddling a lie about migrants eating cats in Ohio.
- Mexicans aren’t bringing their crime to the US any more. “Prisoners” and people who “escape asylums” (from who knows where) are not only taking jobs from Black and Mexican people, but also “doing the crime” now. Also, they have a recipe book for eating pet cats.
- I’m fairly certain Trump thinks asylum seekers are people who escape mental institutions and hightail it to the US to live the American dream.
- At least once Harris referred to Trump as the “former Vice President” which, if it wasn’t an attempt to emasculate him, is on brand for her own misspeaking that her base likes to ignore.
- Marxists around the world were surprised to learn that Harris is actually a Marxist because her Dad is a Marxist professor somewhere and because (just like Jesus) we’re always exactly like our Dads.
- According to Trump, babies in the US will be executed by Harris when they’re born. Which might have been a valid point were he referencing her comment that she wanted to “[ensure] that we have the most lethal fighting force in the world”—a fighting force that continues to execute babies abroad.
- Harris was a great prosecutor who was proud to prosecute migrants fleeing poverty, war, and adversity.
- Trump learned what tariffs are and doubled down on his March threat to “tariff the hell out of” China, Russia, North Korea, and any other country, which is his primary foreign policy tool.
- Harris believes in the existential crisis of climate change—and that fracking will help that.
What many fail to realize in this match between two people who continuously charged one another with lying, was that both lied—and lied a lot. Sure, we’re all accustomed to dishonest politicians by now, but should we be? Is that what freedom means? And what does it matter if Harris “lied less” than Trump when one of her biggest lies was to peddle Israel’s now debunked claims about “beheaded babies” and “mass rape” on October 7th?
We’re meant to overlook the blurring of fact and fiction depending on which propaganda narrative we choose to believe more, but overall, it doesn’t matter that one party lies less than the other. Both lie and the current US administration is complicit in genocidal acts. According to prestigious international medical journal, The Lancet, conservative estimates point to more than 180,000 people in Gaza having been killed (both directly and indirectly) in what many experts are calling a genocide expediated by the current US administration.
What the debate revealed was that, in their effort to be crowned Israel’s Most Staunch Supporter, Trump and Harris argued over who has the more impressive pro-Israel bonafides. Neither candidate answered the question about what they would do to stop the plausible genocide. Both held true to the establishment position because, if there’s an industry that’s running out of cash it’s defense contractors, right?
And you may not agree with me. You might say: “what’s all this got to do with you, you don’t get a say!” But if you listened closely to Tuesday night’s clown-off you’d have noticed that more than half the debate was actually not about domestic policies but was actually focused on global policies, trade, and war. No really. I counted. Domestic policies and questions that affect “everyday life” and the “average citizen” were overshadowed by talk of China, Russia, Venezuela, Mexico, Israel, Iran, Germany, Ukraine, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Yemen, and those faceless “migrants” coming from countries where, according to Trump, violence is actually down (due, we’re left to assume, to their departure).
You see, Harris touted that there were no “American military boots on the ground around the world,” as though the US doesn’t have a whopping 750 military bases in at least 80 countries around the world and doesn’t have proxy wars with stand-ins that fight US enemies. Tax dollars that could be spent on healthcare, education, and infrastructure are funneled abroad to give the illusion that the US is “not at war” around the world. And what’s the point of spending exorbitant amounts of money to build and maintain the most “lethal military in the world,” as Harris wants, if it’s just for show? Certainly, no one dares attack the most lethal military in the world, which is actually a deterrence, right? But what cost is too high when the US already spends upwards of $916 billion on its military?
Trump on the other hand will make peace somehow just by talking with leaders (possibly because, according to Trump, Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán believes he’s “the most respected, most feared person”), and all those peace deals will help him win a Nobel Peace Prize. That should soften the sentencing in his upcoming penalty phase now that he’s been found guilty of fraud.
If you listened closely, you would see how US and global lives are just pawns to the two main establishment parties. Both argued about the Covid response without acknowledging that Covid is still costing the healthcare system—and people continue to lose their lives, particularly those with compromised immune systems. Women’s bodily autonomy was emphasized, but as the saying goes “none of us are free until all of us are free.”
It begs the question as to which women’s rights matter when US imperialism is responsible for dropping bombs on countries where women are using tent cloth as menstrual products because they’re displaced and don’t have access to what should be basic hygiene products or basic anesthetic during childbirth. There was little talk about the details of policies (though, to be fair, when Harris tried her efforts were met with increasingly byzantine lies), mostly due to the fact that Harris will continue Biden’s policies and Trump doesn’t necessarily care if he wins or loses. It’s all a game. People are expendable the world over, and both Trump and Harris talked over each other, climbing some imaginary obstacle course to declare that they are what the US needs.
Cutting through the lies and noise of this epic clown battle, we’re witnessing an empire in decline. Even in Trump’s measured hysteria, he did, probably by accident, say something truthful. He said the US was “a nation in decline, a dying nation”—and there’s no existing candidate in the two-party system who can resuscitate it.
People don’t realize how loathed the US continues to be around the globe. That’s the natural course of a dying empire. The US wants to be left alone and at the same time interfere and have a say globally. No doubt Harris baited Trump effectively and treated him like the classic Hasbro Operation game. She was the tweezers that set off the buzzer, sending Trump into a noisy convulsion that repelled people. She didn’t just leave that bread basket and slim pencil in that body, she shook it up in there for good measure. But in the end, Harris isn’t offering much of an alternative.
People seem convinced she will move to the Left, but all evidence points to her leaning Right in an attempt to speak to the right-wingers who are sick of Trump, and to woo them with endorsements from war criminals and war mongers like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. The quickness with which politicians expect us to forget is an insult to our intelligence. We’re all worth more than the crumbs they throw us—and god knows, when they throw us those crumbs there’s a possibility they’ll mistake us for quails and one of us will catch a stray bullet Cheney-style. There is no manna from heaven now, only crumbs, and the only quails in this timeline are set to outlive us.
In her anecdote about being a former prosecutor Harris said she never asked victims or clients if they were Democrats or Republicans, she just asked them if they were okay. On the surface that sounds so open and so generous until you realize she still only offered two choices. The US public is so conditioned to binary thinking it’s hard to imagine anything beyond black or white—or, more aptly, blue or red. And yet, when it comes to genocide or the rights of all women or gun legislation and keeping children safe, suddenly there’s a grey area.
As much of a liar as he may be, Trump mentioned that the Democrats “run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.” It’s the most true thing he’s said in ages—though of course it’s equally true of Republicans. Whom you vote for this year is a challenge because your options are establishment vs establishment, politicians lining their pockets vs politicians lining their pockets, genocide vs genocide. So choose wisely. And enjoy your freedom.
