Time for the mid-year review. It is hard to feel great about what is going on anywhere in the world right now.
Let's start with the good news:
- In April, U.S House and Senate finally passed a $95B Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act which provided Ukraine with resources to continue defending itself from Putin's invasion. The front is now stabilized, and the Russian army is suffering massive casualties and equipment losses.
- The U.S has approved usage of Western weapons on Russian territory immediately North of Kharkiv, which has likely prevented a new Russian attempt at taking the Ukrainian city.
- The U.S has a plan for Taiwan which they will hopefully be able to implement ostensibly so Xi thinks twice before invading.
- More of Trump's acolytes who promoted The Big Lie conspiracy which claims that the 2020 election was stolen, are in prison; Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, both for ignoring their subpoenas from the J6 committee. They are joining a long list of Trump associates with legal troubles. The ring leader is still at large for his involvement in The Big Lie. History will show that there was at least some accountability for the coup-plotters.
- Trump faced some accountability for what he has done with the 34 felony counts he has been found guilty of by of a jury of his peers
That's about it...
Having left Hong Kong because of its shift to authoritarianism, the most depressing, soul crushing situation today is that Trump is still leading in the polls (here, and here), even after having been adjudicated as a rapist by a civil court in New York, and found criminally guilty of 34 felonies for hiding hush money paid to a porn-star in an effort to augment his chances to win the 2016 elections, it seems that Americans do not care and bought into this 'savior' mentality, hoping that Orange-Jesus will come and fix their personal problems, notwithstanding his failure to do anything really positively impactful in the 4 years he was in office.
Note how Trump rarely if ever points to a policy, bill, or anything specific that he implemented while governing. He simply states that everything was better in very broad terms. While most of it is a lie, some of it is true but has little to do with his presidency (or Biden's for that matter). Actually, in terms of delivering results for the American people, Trump's presidency does not even come close to Biden's.
What started in 2015 and was amplified post Trump electoral loss in 2020 is Trump's success in pushing that if reality is unfitting to support his ambitions, he could just offer an alternate reality, lie constantly, and his supporters, eager to find some solace to their various life malaises, as long as the source of the problems are always the others.
That is the very unique skill of Trump, honed over a lifetime of deceit; the art of bullshit. The average liar cares about consistency in his false narrative, because once the lie is exposed, so is the liar. Not so for the bullshitter. Because he knows that the point is not to show honesty but to show strength in winning arguments, regardless of truth.
As such, you can tell a crowd of Latinos one day, that you have done more for them than any president in history, and the next, state to old white men that Mexico and South America are emptying their prisons and mental institutions into the U.S. Not providing evidences to your claims is not a flaw, it is a feature! Because you only leave your adversaries with the option to state that it is a lie, and any debate then devolves into false equivalences of 'he said, she said' where the bullshitter always wins...
I call it the #TrumpMindVirus ; the inability of the electorate to realize that they have been scammed through lies in giving power to an individual who cares only about his own self, and is willing to dismantle the very idea of the American Republic if it benefits him. The #TMV also reflects the inability of the electorate to escape that cult of personality as it becomes embedded in the very being of a Trump supporter.
Trump gives them exactly what they want to hear when they want to hear it. The Trump followers have been wronged; by immigrants, by the deep-state, by big tech, by the globalists, by the media, by wokeness, by the complexity of this new world which they do not understand, by change. They do not want nor care about making america great for everyone, they want an America that feels good to them. They want to feel in control again. They want vengeance. Trump is their voice. In his own words: "I am your retribution".
Worse, the SCOTUS opinion on Trump's presidential immunity confirmed what was feared by many; he has managed to pervert the democratic institutions enough to entertain such egregious claims that a president cannot be held accountable for crimes that are committed for his sole benefit.
I am not an American, why do I care? I mentioned it before; because America is the torch bearer of democracy. There are stronger democracies in the world, but the one which the world look-up to, to assess the health of democracy, is the one governing the world's leading economic and military superpower.
According to the #TrumpMindVirus doctrine, perceived rather than actual strength, is everything. It is therefore unsurprising that the argument of weakness and frailty is what Trump want electors to associate with Biden.
While on the face of it, the argument is completely bogus, as the strength of a democracy is in decisions being made not by a single man, but by groups of competent individuals accountable to the people. Plurality of views informs good policies.
As long as the president is sound of mind enough to surround himself with the right people, make the right calls and justify them, why would it matter if the person walks funny or looks confused?
However, that is the reality of what the American electorate demands and it would be foolish to ignore it.
The first debate had Biden self knockout (nonsensical sentences and looking as if each word was going to be his last breath).
On the substance, Trump lost the debate by a wide margin as he mostly repeated the same lies he has spewed for the past 4 years about stolen election, how much of a victim he was, projecting his own corruption, and how the southern borders' illegal crossing was the most terrible thing (while he instructed the GOP to vote down a border-bill on the basis that it would benefit Biden).
Substance did not matter. Biden lost the presidency that night based on how old he looked. And it impacts the voters because Biden has shown the world that what Trump was saying for months is true: Biden is too old to govern, despite what Democrats were advocating.
And if that is true one would say, then what else are the Democrats lying to us about? That is how the #TrumpMindVirus propagates, and how Trump wins.
Biden has been a vastly superior president than Trump was. His need to step down is not rooted in his lack of competence or inability to implement good policies for Americans; I just cannot see a way he can recover from the current debacle, and beat Trump in November.
And today, beating Trump is the most important task for anyone who believes in the future of democracy over authoritarianism.
In 4 years, Trump will no longer be a threat to the U.S Republic. MAGA and the #TrumpMindVirus will progressively abate, like the Tea Party did before them, for lack of a genius con-artist psychopath to lead them.
Biden needs to announce quickly that he will not be the candidate for the 2024 presidential elections. Democrats should have a gigantic goodbye event broadcasted to the world, where everything he has accomplished is celebrated.
Then, the Democrats need to quickly pick a successor and I believe Americans are not ready to vote for a woman yet, although I would like them to be (breaking: a Reuters/Ipsos poll seems to indicate otherwise). Otherwise, we'd have seen Hillary beat Trump in 2016.
The current polls show that all potential candidates for the position are trailing behind Trump. However, I am convinced it is due to the fact that nobody knows them. When a large percentage of the electorate does not even know Trump is a convicted felon and has been found liable for business fraud, they certainly would not know who Gavin Newsom is.
This can change really quickly if most of the campaign funds are invested in political ads focusing on the candidate, broadcasted everywhere but especially on social networks and wherever independent voters get their news from.
The new candidate will need to be ready for September's debate and win it decidedly.
That should be relatively easy... Trump will go to the debate unprepared, as he did for the first debate, and re-hash the same lies. If the moderators are not going to ask Trump the tough questions, the Democrat candidate should:
"Name me a bill that you have passed that has lowered inflation?"
"Detail you plan to lower inflation and what is the inflation level you are targeting? Knowing that the U.S under Biden has already drilled more oil than ever before and we are energy independent, drill drill drill is the wrong answer."
"Name me a bill that you have passed that has improved access to healthcare?"
"What was the average price of insulin when you left office?"
"What was the level of unemployment when you left office?"
And provide the answers when Trump lies or deflects the questions.
Ask of the people if what they want for America is to be friendly with dictators of this world like Putin, Kim Jun Un, and Xi or fostering more cooperation with our allies of the free world.
Do they want their president to concentrate more power with the executive branch and remove the checks and balances that make the office accountable to its citizen?
Focus on positive messaging, and contrast it with Trump doom & gloom. Explain that if Trump wants to sell you the idea of problems that do not exist, that is because he wants to sell you snake oil to fix them.
Now, had Nikki Haley won the Republican primaries, it might actually have been the best scenario to quiet the right wing looneys, yet producing 4 years of policies that would very much be in continuation of traditional internal and foreign American practices (which have and continue to insure prosperity for Americans).
With the GOP being a Trump cult, the best scenario shifted to one where Democrats must win.
Failing that, the only hope I have is for Trump to be more like he was during his first term; an inefficient leader, but mostly harmless to the American Republic's democracy.
Which would mean no rule-of-law defying retribution, no partisan nominations to the courts, no Project 2025, ongoing support for Ukraine at least to the level that Biden did. Whatever immigration/border policy he might implement would certainly be bad and misguided, but they would not change the nature of the Republic.
However, the MAGA controlled House has given us a glimpse of things to come that does not bode well for that scenario.
I have seen what could be America's future in Hong Kong, in 2019-2023, when the state shut down the free press using the excuse that they are fake-news, changing the education system to promote nationalism, forcing government workers to pledge loyalty to the rulers, stating that separation of powers is not really a thing and that the executive must be above all, changing the judicial system to rubber-stamp the executive's and the state's actions, and reducing access to voting supposedly to make the system 'better'.
It scares me that Trump has already said he had plans that closely align with those of the Hong Kong and Chinese Communist Party autocrats.
