New York Times editorial board loses its damn mind
The US currently does not have a functioning president, the identity of the person or persons running the country is unknown. But the NYT still thinks Trump is the problem.
This morning when I opened my phone, I saw an email from The New York Times, and the subject heading read: From the Editorial Board: Biden Should Leave the Race.
Eagerly, I clicked on the link. I was keen to find out if the paper of record, where I spent three very happy years in my youth and therefore still have some kind of emotional attachment to, had finally started to come to its senses regarding the outrageous corruption of the Democratic apparatus it has spent the last decade (decades?) protecting. I was hoping I would get some relief from this feeling I — and many former libs like me — have been carrying around throughout those years: a sort of pining for the days were we were still in communion with our fellow libs, when we could all breath easy together knowing that fundamentally, we saw the world the same way.
I had hoped that the Times editorial would bring me that feeling, finally, and I could stop living in dread that a good friend or family member might bring up politics, meaning I would have to either defend myself through argument (I tend to hurt people’s feelings when I do this), or lie by omission.
Dear reader, the Times editorial did not bring me the sweet relief I had hoped for. Quite the contrary.
Sure, they said Biden should withdraw from the race for the good of the nation. Ok, Captain Obvious. But they also said things that made it abundantly clear they are living in cloud cuckoo land and will never, ever, ever recover from their Trump Derangement Syndrome. Instead of writing what should have been a horrified assessment of what the Democratic establishment has done in propping up an obviously non compos mentis man as the leader of the free world, they focused instead on how scary and terrible Trump might be, and how really deep down inside Biden is so nice.
First thing’s first: they actually wrote the following sentence about Biden: “Under his leadership, the nation has prospered.” They linked to a story about how great the American economy is doing. Ok. I am not an economist but I do know you can make numbers tell any damn story you want them to tell. And my eyeballs tell me a very different one. Zombies on the streets of major US cities. Huge numbers of new disability claims. Huge rises in the price of everything. Kids suffering the knock-on effects of the COVID school closures, others being brainwashed into surgically altering their genitals. Screaming hordes of anti-Semites on the streets of LA and New York and at the gates of the White House.
And the NYT calls that prospering. Prospering.
Up second, this sentence: “Donald Trump has proved himself to be a significant jeopardy to [American] democracy— an erratic and self-interested figure unworthy of the public trust.”
Ok. Let’s interpret this in the most charitable way possible— let’s agree that Trump is exactly what they say he is. Does that make it totally fine and safe and normal to go with a figure who has exactly the same traits?
Third— they write: “His supporters have described, publicly, a 2025 agenda that would give him the power to carry out the most extreme of his promises and threats.”
Would you like to know what they mean? Reform. They mean reform. The “extreme” “promises and threats” are actually a suite of proposals that would reform some of the worst overreaches that the all-powerful government bureaucracy currently engages in. They are simply a set of conservative policy positions. To call them extreme is to show extreme bias.
Finally, they put in a nail in the coffin of any expectation they might someday come to their senses, writing: “If the race comes down to a choice between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the sitting president would be this board’s unequivocal pick. That’s how much of a danger Mr. Trump poses.”
They actually said that. Despite having watched as Biden practically drooled from the debate podium on Thursday night, despite the quite obvious fact that he could not even get out a coherent sentence or tell the difference between Medicare and COVID.
This means, of course, that the United States currently does not have a functioning president, nor a vice-president capable of stepping in. The US is — essentially — being run by a person or persons of unknown identity and certainly absolutely no democratic mandate. Yet somehow, for The New York Times, Trump — who has not held office in 4 years and when he did run the country did not cause world war three or the apocalypse or doomsday — is the real danger. You can make many fair and good-faith critiques of Donald Trump. But this ain’t it.
This is pure catastrophising and projection. It’s mind reading and polarised thinking. It’s a multitude of behaviours that even someone with only a passing familiarity with therapy knows are bad.
So here we are. The people and party who have spent the last ten years hysterically crying about threats to democracy have actually ended it. I pray that wisdom prevails soon in America.
Trump was president for four years. Nothing bad happened. The policies he intends to implement are, for the most part, positive changes. Yes, he can be crude, rude, and lewd, but he's nowhere near what the Democratic Party keeps trying to convince us he is. That they spent the last four years trying to destroy him while not in any way fostering new leaders from their ranks is the damning reality and look where it's landed them and us.
This is the sort of juvenile hysteria we've come to expect from the Nation's Foremost College Newspaper.