Thursday 3 October 2024

"The tragedy in the pathetic comedy of last night was this anti-debate’s revelation of the vacuum at the heart of American power"


"Not in recent memory has the country been offered a choice between, in Harris, a vapid mediocrity, and in Trump, an unbalanced malignity. And not in recent memory have the running mates of the two presidential candidates been clearly more qualified than the latter — though barely so — to sit in the White House The only difference between them is that Vance lies and gets away with it and Walz lies and gets caught. A bravura performance by either man would have only put the profoundly flawed tops of their tickets into greater relief. ...
    "The tragedy in the pathetic comedy of last night was this anti-debate’s revelation of the vacuum at the heart of American power, and of the country’s growing helplessness to protect itself as history rushes to fill it."

~ Lee Siegel from his post 'The toxic empathy of the VP debate'

3 comments:

Dave said...

Hmm.....let's unpack this a bit.

While 'vapid mediocrity' is without a doubt, I'm trying to see where 'unbalanced malignity' arises.

According to its Collins definition malignity comprises "persistent, intense ill will or desire to harm others; great malice." While Donny is no doubt brash, boastful, egotistical, uncultured, thin skinned etc......other than mean tweets it would be hard to ascribe 'ill will or a desire to harm others' to his actions in the big chair (given we actually have 4 years in charge on which to base such a categorisation). Given the FISA nonsense, the Russia, Russia bollocks, laptop psyop et al....he would have had every reason to display those traits other than by way of the tantrum he threw when he turned out to be a looser.

So wondering about the rationale for selecting the quote? Orange can certainly be critiqued for many things.....but 'malignity' only if you are going for some kind of big words make me look cool smartarsery or hankering to be a Lincoln project cockholder. It's your site so you can put up what you want but I would have though being an objectivist you would at least look for a credible argument against Trump, not some hysterical Joy Reid nonsense.

Unless of course you think he is a threat to democracy...like the folks who tried to get him jailed, are happy he got shot at and want to shut down anyone who supports him (...which sounds a little malignity to me)


Peter Cresswell said...

Sorry to have impugned your hero, Dave, but there you are.
Brings to mind Evelyn Waugh's well-known remark Winston Churchill's son, Randolph, having a tumour taken out, that it was "a triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it." The word of course has man shades of meaning including the obvious one: "cancerous." Which well describes Orange Man's effect on the Republican Party, on trade, on immigration, on democracy ...
Shall I go on?

Tom Hunter said...

A lawyer who works at the United Nations, Jorge Paoletti, associate legal officer for the Treaty Section of the UN’s Office of Legal Affairs:

“I’m the definition of a globalist....Absolutely nobody wants Trump....I’m not sure the United Nations as an institution is going to survive a second term of Donald Trump...I mean, we are terrified. The purpose of Donald Trump is to end the international institutions that somehow level the playing field.”

She's particularly worried about international climate change agreements.