The Choice

An essay about presidential candidates...

A highly opinionated and articulate reader (let’s call her “Elaine” because that’s her name) left this comment after I wrote about Joe Biden’s recent problems with staying awake and speaking in complete sentences:

“Joe Biden could burn down an orphanage on Christmas Eve and then piss all over the ashes, and I'd still vote for him over Donald Trump. That's not saying much for him or me, but in the current two-party system, I'm more comfortable with a doddering old man who at least listens to his advisors over a sawed-off Mussolini who answers to no one.”

The only thing I disagree with in that comment is the “sawed-off Mussolini” description because Trump is 6-3 and Mussolini was 5-7 although Benito may have been 5-8 ½ after the mob got done hanging him upside down from a metal beam in a gas station.

If the choice is between a feeble guy trying (perhaps ineffectively) to do the right thing and an energetic guy trying (as hard as he can) to do the wrong thing, I know who I’m voting for. And if the Republicans argue we just can’t have a president who might be mentally impaired by age, I’ve got a two word response:

1.) Ronald.

And…

2.) Reagan.

Republicans revere Ronald Reagan like he wrote the Star Spangled Banner, carved Mt. Rushmore with his bare hands and then ascended into heaven in a fiery chariot, but it’s been widely speculated that Reagan was suffering from Alzheimer’s while president and that it was showing up as early as three years into his first term and here’s a familiar sounding description of Reagan’s debate performance against Walter Mondale in 1984:

"My heart sank as he floundered his way through his responses, fumbling with his notes, uncharacteristically lost for words. He looked tired and bewildered."

That description was written by Ronald Reagan’s son, Ron.

And if his own son’s opinion doesn’t convince you, here’s an article from the National Institutes of Health which published a study that compared Reagan’s speech patterns from press conferences and concluded there were language variables associated with dementia that showed up long before Reagan got an official diagnosis. According to the article, Reagan’s changing speech patterns contained indicators of dementia as early as 1980.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6922000/

So the Republicans worship the ground Ronald Reagan forgot he walked on, but will now tell everybody we can’t possibly vote for a president who isn’t at his best after a long tiring day, which I sympathize with because I haven’t been at my best since the spring of 1980.

(Actually, I’m now way better from the neck up and way worse from the neck down and before I kick the bucket — assuming I can still lift my leg high enough to do that — I’m hoping they come up with the same technology that was used so effectively in the 1962 science fiction movie The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.)

That’s actor Jason Evers portraying Dr. Bill Cortner in the scene where he wonders if he takes 10% of his girlfriend to a drive-in movie whether he has to pay full price for two tickets or will get some kind of price break on a chick who can be transported in a Size-12 shoe box.

Anyway…

Apparently one of the signs of dementia is the increased use of “filler words” like:

• “Well”

• “So”

• “Basically”

• “Actually”

• “Literally”

• “Um”

And

• “Ah”

Which would seem to indicate I started developing dementia the first time I had to get up and talk in front of a group of people which happened somewhere around my Sophomore year in high school.

• Literally.

Nevertheless, among those who don’t have their heads buried in the sands of whatever beach they bought their second home on, it’s widely accepted that Reagan was having problems while he was president and that hasn’t stopped the Republicans from lionizing him, which sounds like what the Romans did to some unlucky Christians, but isn’t.

Don’t forget Edith Bolling Galt Wilson

After President Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and was confined to his bed, his wife Edith would pre-screen “all matters of state” which basically meant Edith would decide who got to talk to Woodrow and what documents he’d see and then she’d go into his bedroom and come out and announce what Woody said he wanted done and while she claimed she never made any decisions, it’s been widely speculated that she was in reality our first woman president.

So suck on that, Hillary.

(Here she is making her “What’s Bill done now?” face.)

Now here’s an article about the woman who beat Hillary to the presidency:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/woodrow-wilson-stroke

So the people who surround a president matter and next here’s an article about Project 2025 a proposed overhaul of the federal government written by Trump allies and former Trump administration officials and their plan promises a second “American Revolution” which includes firing 50,000 government workers and replacing them with Trump loyalists because you just can’t have too many irrational fanatics running a government.

(Although people who were alive in the 1930s might put up an argument.)

Heritage Foundation President and Grand Dragon Kevin Roberts recently said Republicans are “in the process of taking the country back” and added “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Which when translated into plain English seems to mean: “We’ve got some batshit crazy plans and if you oppose them someone’s going to get hurt and it won’t be us.”

https://apnews.com/article/trump-project-2025-biden

Trump has denied even knowing who is involved in Project 2025 which sounds about as likely as his latest golf score and if these are the kind of people who will surround and advise Donald Trump, I’ll take my chances with Jill Biden.

Today’s Lesson

According to the internet, a wide variety of people have been credited with saying “context is everything” and while I’m not 100% sure context is everything — if it’s 102 degrees where you are, you’re still hot even though the surface of the sun is even hotter and neither one is quite as hot as Fresno, California — context matters.

But manipulative people will try to convince you to look at things in isolation mostly because considering alternatives will dick up the case they’re trying to make.

That being the case, when you think about Joe Biden, consider the alternative, which is a lying felon who encouraged the overthrow of the government when things didn’t go his way and will surround himself with a bunch of Brown-Shirt Wannabes who seem overly eager to get started on building the Fourth Reich.    

Until something or someone better comes along, I’m voting with Elaine.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/