IMITATIONS: Something of consequence happened last night!

FRIDAY, JUNE 28, 2024

A sacred alliance must die: We tried to tell you what you'd be seeing if you watched last evening's event.

You'd be watching an "imitation of life," we said. We mentioned that problem all week.

Along the way, we may have edited our own words at times. At one point, we'd written that you'd be seeing two "god-awful candidates." 

We may have dropped that adjective. We don't exactly remember, and we aren't going to go back to check.

At any rate, this:

At 7:05 this morning, Mike Barnicle, appearing on Morning Joe, said this about Candidate Trump's performance:

"It was the worst debate performance in modern political history."

In fact, if you watched last evening's event, you saw the two worst debate performances in modern political history. Indeed, what you saw last night was so bad that they didn't even try to deceive you when they gathered the children to perform on MSNBC in the aftermath of the event.

Nicolle Wallace had been on the phone during the debate.  Presumably, she had been speaking to the gaggle she describes, every day, as "some of our favorite reporters and friends." 

She said that she'd been on the phone as the debacle took place. Moments after the session ended, this is what she told Rachel Maddow:

WALLACE (6/27/24): I was on the phone for some of it after that became clear and there is a conversation happening inside Biden circles and certainly a much more frank conversation happening inside the Democratic coalition. And I think there will be stories of a lot of concern about the performance tonight.

MADDOW: When you say "conversations happening," what do you mean?

WALLACE: I think people are talking—conversations range from whether he should be in this race tomorrow morning to what was wrong with him.

[...]

It is not our job to tell people what to see and hear, but I think what I heard from a Biden aide is, "We can't necessarily spin too much what people did see and hear."

It isn't their job to tell us what to see and hear? When did that change take place?

Below, we'll answer one of the questions Wallace cited. Instantly, Joy Reid added this:

REID: I too was on the phone throughout much of the debate—with ObamaWorld people, with Democrats, with people who are political operatives, campaign operatives. My phone never really stopped buzzing throughout. And the universal reaction was somewhere approaching panic.

The people who were texting with me were very concerned about President Biden seeming extremely feeble, seeming extremely weak...

As the evening moved toward midnight, the children began finding ways to soften these initial reactions, even if ever so slightly. But that's the way the gaggle spoke in the immediate aftermath of the event—after the most likely occurrence had in fact occurred.

As we've noted, we were surprised when the Biden campaign decided to do this debate. Based on what we'd seen in the course of the past year, we thought it was unlikely that the candidate would be able to perform in a normal way. 

By 10:45 last night, even the usual favorites and friends were acknowledging what had happened. Weirdly but obediently, these people had been pretending that nothing was amiss right up through last night.

It isn't President Biden's fault that he has long seemed to be in the grips of some possible form of dementia. In our view, it isn't even Candidate Trump's fault that he seems to be in the grip of a severe psychiatric disorder of some kind.

That said, our imitation of a mainstream press corps has agreed, every step of the way, that neither of these apparent situations should ever be discussed. When Dr. Bandy X. Lee produced this New York Times best-seller, the book was disappeared:

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President

The best-selling book was disappeared. As for Dr. Lee, she was eventually fired by Yale. 

We're not even saying the press corps was "wrong" in its avoidance of Dr. Lee's book. Given the childishness of our national discourse, it may be better that a blindingly obvious possibility has gone unexplored.

That said, the press corps has also agreed to disappear the obvious signs of President Biden's apparent affliction. They kept playing the troubling videotapes on the Fox News Channel—but the troubling pieces of videotape were disappeared everywhere else. 

Last night, the situation which is easier to see could no longer be ignored. Like Captain Renault in Casablanca, Blue America's corporate "thought leaders" were shocked to learn that an apparent form of diminishment seemed to be well underway.

Are we humans "the rational animal?" Plainly, we are not. 

We're more the reality denying animal—the animal which denies reality in packs. Along the way, we at this site have tried to describe the universe within which Blue America's insistence on denial has been operating in the course of the past year. 

In our view, Blue America's corporate gaggle became almost wholly unwatchable in recent years. Instead, we took you back to the dawn of the west, when noble Hector offered this prophecy to Andromache, his generous wife:

For in my heart and soul I also know this well:
the day will come when sacred Troy must die,
Priam must die and all his people with him,
Priam who hurls the strong ash spear...

Somehow, Hector knew that sacred Troy was destined to die. In that same exchange, he said he hoped he would die in battle so he wouldn't have to see his generous wife forced to confront her own fate:

It is less the pain of the Trojans still to come
that weighs me down...
That is nothing, nothing beside your agony
when some brazen Argive hales you off in tears,
wrenching away your day of light and freedom!
Then far off in the land of Argos you must live,
laboring at a loom, at another woman's beck and call
fetching water at some spring, Messeis or Hyperia,
resisting it all the way, the rough yoke of necessity at your neck.

[...]

No, no,
let the earth come piling over my dead body
before I hear your cries, I hear you dragged away!

During the fall of sacred Troy, noble Hector's generous wife was in fact dragged away. Indeed, she was dragged away as a slave by Agamemnon himself. 

Somehow, Hector was able to prophesy that. As to what may have been foreshadowed last night, we're willing to offer you this:

Sacred Troy must die, noble Hector said. So too, perhaps, with the western alliance—with the world order which has prevailed since 1945.

As sacred Troy was destined to die, so too, perhaps, with the global order as living Americans have known it. The long clown show which has led to this point has been underway for more than three decades, with career players like Wallace, Maddow, O'Donnell and Hayes paid to refuse to describe it.

One candidate has seemed to be in the grip of some form of dementia. The other candidate has long seemed to be severely mentally ill.

The corporate employees we're instructed to trust—"our favorite reporters and friends"—have agreed, every step of the way, that neither situation could ever be discussed. Meanwhile, on today's Morning Joe, they were keeping their childish war cry alive:

Lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie!

One after another, the children all said it. More on that war cry next week.

We'll examine last night's events in more detail at that time. This morning, though, Mika was still saying this:

"I still believe in Joe Biden."

Full disclosure:

All in all, these are not especially insightful people. More often, they're simply people people. 

In the end, there's nothing "wrong" with being people people. But if our species' history is any guide. the matter which has finally come to the fore may not turn out especially well.

Sacred Troy died in a famous poem, destroyed in a vicious assault from below. As we've been noting at this site, a similar assault is now underway each and every night.

The New York Times averts its gaze. Enjoying a higher station in life, they won't discuss that either!