Omnium Gatherum #88: Fear and Loathing, Xeniteia and Apoleteia On The Campaign Trail 2024: Of Debates, Debacles, and Other Challenges

Howdy, folks!

Welcome once again to the Omnium Gatherum.

Or, if you’re new here, welcome to the Omnium Gatherum.

In my previous column, I wrote about how I felt about voting and politics in general in this year of Our Lord 2024 Gregorian or Julian, 5784 Hebrew, or 1446 Islamic calendar. I also wrote that I am a politics junkie and so would be watching even if I weren’t voting. In the three months since I last wrote in this space, a lot has happened.

A lot that I’m pretty sure the Democratic Party apparatus, elites, and rank & file members wished hadn’t happened.

Not to bury the lede, a few weeks ago, Donald J. Trump the former president and then candidate and presumptive nominee of the Republican Party and Joseph R. Biden the sitting president and leader of the Democratic Party met for the first time in four years on a debate stage. 

What a difference four years has made and not for the better for the president.

Last time I mentioned that I was and am a fan of Biden and voted for him in 2020 mostly out of duty but with some trepidation. Because it had been obvious to me in 2019 he was not as sharp as he had been in his political past. But I had hoped he, his family, and his staff would have spent their time in the White House preparing for this cycle, either by doing whatever was necessary to keep his wits sharp or by being willing to admit that Father Time has won and either pushed Vice President Harris as the next nominee or let the field open up to find someone else. 

Neither of those options occurred.

So Joe Biden met Donald Trump on the debate stage and within a matter minutes, all Hell broke loose.

By the time the debate was done, the damage was only just getting started.

As I write this, President Biden has had to deal with three weeks of calls from various members of his own party to step down, find someone else, anything to keep Donald Trump from winning this fall and returning to the White House. Part of why I didn’t want to vote in this cycle was that continuing to act as if there wasn’t anything wrong with the president or the simple, honest fact that he is an 82 year old man and that maybe not everything about him functions as well as it should felt as if it were elder abuse. Problem is, when you’ve fully invested in the politics of fear, the one thing you’re afraid of is giving up that strategy. So the calls for Biden’s replacement—with a few calls mixed in for Harris’s elevation, which itself is telling—are out of a fear that he can’t beat Trump in the fall. Almost as if there may have been some other reason why the sitting president won by more votes last time. Fear of a second Trump term, perhaps?

And exactly what nightmare scenario are many Democrats facing as I write?

A second Trump presidential term.

A likelihood that moves closer to manifestation with each passing day.

A likelihood that seems predestined in a sense as two major legal cases against Trump have finished with less than satisfying results for Democrats who thought lawfare was the way to defeat Trump. Sure, he got convicted in the New York fraud case. Only for the Supreme Court to agree with his lawyers on the idea of presidential immunity. That threw the conviction in New York into doubt as the judge delayed sentencing until September in order to review the Supreme Court’s ruling. The other major case was the Florida classified documents case which the judge just dismissed on a technicality the morning of day 1 at the Republican National Convention. Whatever else can be said about the mechanics of these cases (and yes, I’m pretty ignoring the accusations of the fix being in because Trump appointed three conservatives to the Supreme Court and the judge in Florida; it’s not a good rabbit hole to go down because it opens up similar accusations about the Manhattan district attorney and judge, if one wants to be fair about the matter), these results definitely favored Trump.

And the events of Saturday July 13 take the idea of Trump being favored and took it into levels of divine intervention, no matter how much some but not all folks like it.

On Saturday July 13, 2024 A.D., while he was speaking at a rally, a shooter attempted to assassinate Trump. He failed. But the aftermath has been amazing, worrying, and even horrifying to observe. What was amazing was seeing how close Trump came to being shot in the head. The photograph showing one of the bullets whizzing past his head, likely the one that grazed his right ear is worthy of The Matrix; the Trump as Neo doing Bullet Time memes were let loose upon the internets within minutes of the incident. And yes, almost as if it had been planned—at this point, I’ll leave it to the two readers to decide if the planning was Manchurian Candidate, WWE, or Providential in origin—Trump was helped to his feet by Secret Service and in an act of defiance of the moment and his security detail pumped his fist and shouted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” to the stunned yet recovering crowd as blood ran down his face. No one can deny that such a moment, planned or random, was iconic. No matter what else happens to him this campaign and this lifetime on this Earth, that moment will live in history. 

That moment and the imagery coming out of it is not only making history but it appears to be galvanizing, reigniting, and otherwise fueling the Republicans and Trump in its aftermath.

That moment is also demoralizing the Democrats that much more, unfortunately. As I said half jokingly above, the assassination attempt was too perfect a moment for our media savvy world. It will appear staged to those who want it to be such, no matter what evidence comes out that proves otherwise, if that happens. After all, his legal victories and winning debate aside, Trump obviously needs something to sell himself to the American people, to those lost enough, gullible enough, desperate enough, and racist enough to vote for him surely. He can’t win without such a boost, right? So this attempt is just too perfect for some to believe was real.

And yet, my fellow Americans, we now live in the aftermath of that strange enough to be true more than fictive event. There are memes and t-shirts galore to commemorate it, in true American fashion. 

So Donald Trump, wounded in mythic heroic fashion, is marching through his party’s convention, with his new Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance by his side and the united and fired up party at his back.

In contrast, as of this writing, President Biden is having to stop his campaign events due to testing positive for Covid or Corona-Chan as I call her.

Four years ago, it was the rampaging of Corona-Chan across this country and world that was one of the problems that helped bring Donald Trump’s first term to its end, with Joe Biden beating that drum as loudly and often as he could. Now he himself is knocked down by the now commonplace disease.

Four years ago, it was the violence in our cities because of the death of George Floyd that helped bring Trump down. Now it is an act of violence against him, along with the growing violence in our cities, that may help Trump assume this nation’s highest office once again.

Again, what a difference four years has made.

I don’t know what the Democrats are going to do. I don’t know if they can do anything. The truth of the matter is, replacing Biden at this stage will hurt more than keeping him on the ticket and any good practical politician and pundit knows it. Vice President Harris couldn’t win a primary in 2020; what guarantee is there that she could win against Trump as sitting Vice President? The same could be said of Governor Newsom of California. More importantly, think about how fundamentally demoralizing such a move would be. It’s fair to say the Democrats would be better off sticking with Biden and going down in a blaze of glory and hopefully start planning for the 2026 midterms and for the 2028 election cycle. That and leaning into the hysteria around Project 2025 as much as possible, in the hopes it does more in terms of garnering votes for lower level candidates than the names at the top of the ticket.

Not that such strategies would sit well with some but not all of the Democratic Party faithful rank and file.

Already across various social media platforms it seems as though many liberals, progressives, Democrats, and the life are having public meltdowns over recent events. The gamer Destiny is one of the major figures who seems to be destroying himself and his brand in the days following the assassination attempt. The band Tenacious D has self destructed over one member saying “Don’t miss next time” on stage in Australia. As I wrote in the previous installment of this series, the battlelines have long ago been drawn. People have retreated behind them and in their tribes, and are getting themselves ready for…

What, exactly?

A possible fascist America once Trump is back in office?

A Second American Civil War?

Or another four year period where the mainstream news media, celebrities, and others all go out of their way to constantly show how bad Trump is while the country limps along, skips along, runs ahead, or whatever happens if and when Trump takes office?

My crystal ball is usually pretty good and even though I have started using tarot and other divination cards lately, I haven’t much of a clue as to what the future holds.

I wonder what kind of coattails Donald Trump could have this time around. Will he get a Republican controlled House and/or Senate? On the flip side, will he finally be the fascist and reincarnated Hitler that he’s been called all along? If so, will he really be able to take over the entire United States of America? Four years ago, being me, I ran scenarios. This is a tough question to answer because it really relies on the nature of the people. If enough Americans are desperate enough to simple want someone to be in charge and tell them what to do, then it will be a lot easier than anyone could imagine. If Americans are, well, Americans, see my answer above about a Second American Civil War.

Much like America and the world at this moment in time, I really didn’t have a direction or agenda when I started this column. Just random thoughts about where we are with America’s politics in this election year. 

Recent events haven’t changed my mind about being apoleteia this cycle. It’s not so much the assassination attempt as the response by Trump’s political opponents has done a lot to convince me I am right in my choice to sit this one out. Yet I’m a politics junkie. As I write this straight with no notes or mind map chasing it, I have two different YouTube streams playing of the Republican National Convention, in addition to MSNBC’s coverage on a nearby TV. I’ll be doing the same with the DNC rolls around in August. I’ve been fascinated by politics all my life and I don’t see that changing, no matter how disgusted I may be with some of the current players. Unfortunately, having read Sun Tzu and Machiavelli and Marx (unfortunately), amongst others, as well as some history on my own beyond the basic primer level available in most US primary and secondary education, I understand that politics are inevitable. The beauty of the American system is that I can choose not to participate; the beauty of being an American means I can still comment to my heart’s content.

At least when I make a commentary on politics it’s not coming from the barrel of a gun or a thrown Molotov cocktail.

Hopefully we will have more of that former sort of politics and political commentary in the days to come because the latter are messy.

Then again, so is life.

And I'm still working on the Watchmen piece.

Until next time, folks!

Namaste, y’all!