Nearly everyone watched the first debate between the two completely deranged men seeking the presidency (again) last night. Or wait, no they didn't. They did what I did-- they watched the clips as they rolled in on Twitter, then laughed, then the laughter sort of petered out and they looked into the middle distance and thought about death, and the feeble nature of our institutions. Right? Guys? Am I right?
This debate was ultimately the debate America deserved; a debate between two candidates no one really wants to be president of a country where no one understands what the president does anymore, other than spend kajillions of dollars on increasingly sophisticated bombs signed by our favorite actors before they're sent off for murder, or post photos on their highly curated social media pages of them eating ice cream with the caption "Too cool for school (sunglasses emoji fire emoji ice cream emoji)".
The extent to which our electoral process has been whittled down to "these guys are both terrible, choose which of them you'd like to enter the climate apocalypse under" is deeply distressing but also deeply funny. For all of America's claims that it's a bastion of freedom, an exemplar of democratic values and an example for the rest of the world (which just keeps getting it wrong), we allowed CNN to build a fancy little set and wheel the two presumptive candidates for the highest position in our country out on stage, lob them softball questions, and allow each to mumble incoherently about golf, or immigrants, or COVID... I, uh er--- I mean Medicare. We finally beat Medicare.
These are the death throes of an empire that surely deserves death, not just for the misery it has inflicted upon the world and its peoples but also for its stubborn insistence that it is the example for the world, it is the symbol of freedom, and it should be leading the world through the many crises we now face.
To watch these two old, feeble, feckless, power-hungry and delusional men stumble their way through a debate that largely ignored anything of substance, instead focusing on what someone said about something at some point and who's to blame for it all felt like a perfect encapsulation of this moment in American history. Listless, lacking in any direction or moral clarity, determined to be individually right above all else, and steeped in an ignorance and callousness that would make the villains of history blush.
The many decades of hellfire violence the United States has exported in service of some vague ideas of securing copycat democracies across the globe has all led to this; two old men raising their arms to punch feebly at the air around each other while their country crumbles and the world around them races towards catastrophe. Perhaps the only semblance of justice that this empire will face is that its decline will be pockmarked with pathetic images like this, symbols of a rapidly fading fantasy that was only ever gossamer, shored up and paved over the top of countless innocent lives.
So, while children in Gaza starve to death or are shot by snipers or crushed between the floor plates of their homes as they collapse in the bombing, these two men circle one another, making vain attempts to justify their being on that stage and their right to lead the country in more bloodshed. They insult one another like children on the playground, eager for their go on the swing. Meanwhile, somewhere, the bombs and bullets are loaded onto a plane with industrial efficiency, our proudest export and our greatest legacy.
We deserved this debate. Most of us didn't watch it because, deep down, we all knew what would happen anyway: the same thing that always happens, and always will.
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