Biden Bed Wetters and Trump Derangement Syndrome

Time to Open the Floodgates of Criticism and Bring On the Reckoning

Preface: Today I’m backing off from breaking news about military parades in Washington DC and nation-wide counter-demonstrations against kings. Those events are amply covered elsewhere. But I do have a photo or two.

Instead of discussing political assassinations and the pitched effort to make them mean the exact opposite thing, I’ll go ahead and submit a post that is probably anachronistic on several levels. In it, I try to reclaim lost middle ground as a rabid non-partisan centrist. Over the past four decades plus, I’ve drifted from one side of the political spectrum to the other, if never with much religious conviction, and have ended up dithering somewhere near dead center. Still, this post might also come across as trying to split a problem down the middle. I guess I’ll take that risk.

So here goes.

Biden Bed Wetters and Trump Derangement Syndrome

Like many others, I’m troubled by the effort to cut off legitimate political criticism at the knees with heavy-handed tactics and emotionally manipulative maneuvers.  While not perfect equivalents or equally serious, I see parallels happening in both political parties, which bodes ill for escaping our current crisis intact if at all.  We need a real reckoning, which demands bold, no-holds barred, intellectually honest discussion and candid dialogue without contempt.  

On all sides.  

Whether it’s defensiveness, denial, and sanctimony or relentless lying and sheer monumental nonsense, these self-defeating ploys stifle dissent, corrode our public discourse, and close the doors and windows of our open society.  What happened to substantive give and take and honest disagreement?  Calling critics bed wetters or deranged seems more schoolyard taunt than serious engagement. It sounds silly to have to say this, but that is no way to run a party or country. 

Photo by Eduardo Flores on Unsplash

The Bed Wetters Were Right

I recall all too clearly the derision with which Biden insiders and party officials dismissed as “bed wetters” those of us who believed the then-president should not run for re-election because he was plainly too old and had lost more than just a step.  The gaslighting lasted until about this time last year, the memory still fresh.  Dripping with disdain, this phrase was meant to cast the vast majority of Americans as prone to silly fretting, misled by their mistaken outsider perceptions and not privy to the hushed insider truth.  It was strongly implied that those in the know, the high priesthood of political wisdom, knew better.  

Biden is fine.  So shut your little traps, ye faithless rabble who understand little of our dark and sophisticated art.  Don’t believe what you see and hear in the plain light of day.  Forget even the fact that the incumbent had explicitly promised to be a transition president at first and, like Eisenhower, was perfectly positioned to pass the baton to the next generation (a number of whom are seriously impressive).  Besides that, Biden and his insider crew implausibly claimed he was the only candidate who could beat Trump.  Because… wait for it… he was the only one who had done so before. What?

How does one thing follow from the other?  I always wondered whether the management of a professional football team would have allowed the same argument to be made on behalf of a veteran quarterback who had brought one squeaker of a superbowl victory but now plainly—since he could no longer run or throw or call an audible—no longer could?  Didn’t they want the best possible athlete on the field?

I see a clear echo of that same perverse dynamic of evasion at work again now in the pointed attacks against Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson for writing and publishing their book, Original Sin–President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Decision to Run Again.  It is, these sneering but not strictly partisan critics say, the wrong book about the wrong president at the wrong time.  It distracts from the real and present danger, gives ammunition to the enemy, and should be blocked or swept under the rug.

I consider this criticism to be flat wrong, totally misguided.  Americans can walk and chew gum at the same time.  It’s one of our great national talents, not to mention pastimes.  On the contrary, those journalists have done the Democrats, and the rest of us, a great favor.  They confirmed what we already knew.  He was the wrong candidate at the wrong time. It turns out everyone in the know also knew, but only pretended they didn’t until it was too late. 

For good reason, the Democrats should be first in line for the necessary reckoning. Americans can lay at least part of the blame for the current catastrophe, the colossal disaster we’re living through now, on the Democratic party.  A dispassionate observer might even argue that being out of power gives them an advantage—the opportunity to conduct their reckoning and do their repairs without having to fly the ailing airplane of the state at the same time.  Assuming success (a big assumption), they can then position themselves as a true alternative in 2028 (assuming a free and fair election) rather than offer more of the same gradual or grinding, steep decline.

The last thing they—or we—need is a cover-up of the cover-up.  No, they need a long spell of sunlight, a deep cleaning with lots of disinfectant, and probably even a do-over while they’re at it.  Bring on the contrary views, the blistering criticism, the things no-one wants to hear.  Or suffer the consequences (along with the rest of us).

Enough with the Trump Derangement Syndrome

The same goes for the phrase “Trump derangement syndrome”, only raised to a much higher power.  These prickly porcupine words are intended to block rational argument, stymie legitimate criticism, and end all discussion, making the expression of contrary views essentially off limits.  Loyalty means having lockstep opinions, accepting what you know not to be true, dangerously blinkered groupthink.  Yes, sir. How high would you like me to jump?  Through this window or out of that one?  Ain’t nobody here but us courtiers, sycophants, and chickens.  

Well, this shouldn’t be so, at least not in a so-called democracy.  

Instead of building a wall of political correctness around our mentally defective president, I wish his defenders would provide a clear, concrete, and compelling defense of his controversial policies. In no particular order:

• This is how tariffs will work to bring back manufacturing jobs and floods of money into our coffers.

• This is how dismantling federal agencies will help save real money (more than a mere billion here and there) and make the government more efficient.  

• This is how more tax cuts for the ultra wealthy will help balance the budget and help the struggling middle classes.

• This is how ignoring judicial orders will make America greater, stronger, and more resilient.

• This is how hiring only friends, cronies, and loyalists will reduce corruption in government.

• This is how allowing the president to use his office to make untold millions will make all Americans better off.

• This is how arresting and deporting ordinary undocumented migrants who have no criminal record and work in the kinds of jobs most Americans don’t want to do will help the economy and improve the social fabric.

• This is how destroying the trust of our partners and torpedoing our alliances will shore up our foreign policy advantages.

The list goes on.  To these many questions, we need good answers, not obvious evasions.  Put the concrete pieces together in a way that anyone, even critics, can understand, even if they don’t agree.  Show us how all the contradictory parts cohere and make sense.  “Make America great again” is a slogan, not a strategy. 

The whims and delusions of a reality TV president who seems like he wouldn’t mind being dictator or king, if only he had the patience and discipline, can’t carry a party very far.  A country either.  Nor can banishing common sense, criticism, or speaking truth to power.  Will the priestly Republican insiders clammed up in fear now also claim ex post facto, after the whole shebang comes crashing down, that they knew all along the emperor had no clothes but felt no compulsion to say so at the time?  

Probably.  Almost certainly.  How much do you want to bet?

I’ll bet the Republican party’s reckoning, should it come, will make the Democratic party’s coming to terms look like a picnic by comparison.

*****

But the sooner a real reckoning comes, the better for all of us, regardless of partisan persuasion.  Absent either or both, I see little hope of getting out of the hot mess we’ve gotten ourselves into: the perverse self-immolation, the obsession with manufactured crises, the obliteration of all norms and rules, on and on and on.  And little chance of taking on the real challenges we face, which loom ever closer on the horizon, if they haven’t already enveloped us.  

I confess.  In making this plea, I feel more like an anxious patriot than a rabid partisan. I trust most of my fellow patriotic Americans agree.