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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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The selection of the new presidential canditate only through a tweet and with no appearance of Biden, certainly has the strong appearance of a coup. If Biden is conscious and can string two sentences together even with gaffes and dementia, he really ought to get behind a camera and speak what his account has twitted. He has that responsibility to his country even if he doesn't feel up to it.

There is also the possibility that he is alive but that tweet didn't represent his views at the time and there was a sort of a coup and he lacks control to counter it, especially after Kamala' endorsement by many.

Or maybe he was pressured and possibly threatened (scandals, prosecution of his son, or even him) but he did do it and he is bitter about it.

Another alternative that his reported health issue from last week is considerably worse than has been implied, in a 'man he looks like shit' sense.

If he physically looks weak / unable to function- say stuck to a bed with IVs- that would be an understandable reason to avoid any sort of visual media presence.

But yes, the conspicuous lack of presence- especially when tied to the immediate wave of pro-Harris election propaganda starting to go across the internet / into youtube advertisemenets that was almost certainly on hand and ready in advance- is 'he's not the one in control' vibes.

In fact reporting supports this. I saw a few articles that even identified a specific time frame where he made his decision Saturday night, identified who on his team knew about it, etc.

Two things allegedly contributed. One, yes, apparently he was taking longer to recover from COVID than expected, so half right there. Two, he got some polling data from the swing states, and oh boy was it bad.

In fact, and I found this interesting, they hadn’t done new major polling in swing states for almost two months! At least two sources I saw chalked this up to almost willful ignorance.

A coup is when you overthrow the leader of a country. Figuring out who runs for election to be the next leader is just not what a coup is.

  • -20

Palace coup:

a situation in which a leader is removed from power by the people who have worked with him or her

Biden is technically still in power.

Okay, again, Biden hasn’t been removed from power. There’s an upcoming election and his party decided to not nominate him.

  • -10

Biden hasn't been removed from power

With what knowledge the rest of us lack are you making this assertion

One presidential candidate got shot.

The other one went AWOL and is tweeting that he is no longer running.