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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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Trump? His debate performance was exactly as it has always been - pretty much abysmal and an easy win for anybody not named Joe Biden.

Come now, let us not forget Hillary Clinton, or the Republican primary candidates that got slaughtered back in 2016 so badly, that no one could even come close to challenging him in the current run, even after he lost the 2020 presidency.

Republic Primaries - fair. He did bring it.

Vs Hillary? I always felt like she let him back into it because she's so insincere herself. I believe most of the "experts" said she won each debate, but I think that was also at a time when the "experts" were pretending about half of American didn't exist, didn't vote, and certainly didn't matter. The whole story of 2016 is just how far willful self-deception can take you (all the way until you're face to face with your own glass ceiling).

Yeah. All I'm saying is that the list of people capable of losing to Trump is longer than just Joe Biden. I agree that it says more about them than him, but this is where we are.

Trump's political "gift" is that he is the antidote to a certain kind of entrenched mainstream political insincerity by himself being a cartoon of political insincerity. Every politician loses in some way by appearing with Trump.

He mocks his opponents merely by appearing alongside them -- and then also points out that he is mocking them as he mocks them directly on micro-subjects. He is the clown who reveals that it's been a clown show all along. I think this makes him a shitty president, but very useful as a sort of corrective to a game that has been playing with itself for far too long.