By Daniel Turner
I juggled watching the first presidential debate on multiple devices: TV for Fox, my personal phone for running commentary with friends and family, media engagement on my work phone, and social media on my laptop. The reaction was unanimous: this debate is a disaster.
Clearly the debate was all of that, and more. It was rude. It was crass. It was impolite and uncivilized. It was demeaning. It was America right now, and that is a very, very bad thing. We are all to blame.
We are witnessing a constant erosion of the very things that unite us: our culture. Love for country. Trust in government. Respect for the flag and for the police. The healing pastime of apolitical sports. As all these parts of culture erode, a fragmented people lash out, perhaps even more violently after months of “lockdown.”
Culture matters. Early in his administration, President Trump spent a great deal of time in defense of culture, especially our American, western culture. “The world has never known anything like our community of nations” he told a crowd in Warsaw, Poland, in 2017. “We write symphonies. We pursue innovation. We celebrate our ancient heroes, embrace our timeless traditions and customs, and always seek to explore and discover brand-new frontiers…and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God.”
After a nearly year-long closure of concert halls I almost forget about symphonies, and music in general. Our ancient heroes? Nancy Pelosi, the Italian-American speaker of the House, refused to condemn the blatantly criminal (let alone sociologically damaging) toppling of the statue of Christopher Columbus in her birthplace of Baltimore, where her father had been mayor.
Maybe that’s just political expediency, but when the city council of Washington, DC calls for the removal of the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial, we’ve entered the world of lunacy.
Funny how they didn’t recommend changing the name of Washington, District of Columbia, but logic isn’t on the docket here, culture is, and it’s striking how very little intellectual curiosity these political leaders have. How did Thomas Jefferson give us our nation’s brilliant foundational political document while being overtly immoral as a slave owner? Isn’t that worth discussion? No: tear it down. Tear it all down. Baby out with the bathwater.
Tear down, too, those “inspiring works of art that honor God.” Churches have been desecrated in New York, Florida, Minnesota, California, Tennessee, Colorado, Missouri, and so on. In the heat of Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, DC, the historic Saint John’s Church was set on fire. Its bishop condemned President Trump.
We are not just tearing down our past, our culture is poisoning our present. “Temptation Island” has rebooted. The 2001 series that drew 16 million viewers puts attractive couples on an island to see if they will cheat on each other. Mainstream voyeurism given a second chance.
Another poplar American TV show, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” is coming to an end after 15 years. We may become lost as Kim, Kourtney, and… the other one have become part of our day-to-day. At the height of the Russia hoax, more Americans were debating Kim Kardashian’s marble table than whether our president was an foreign operative.
Think about that. Are these the same people expecting Lincoln-Douglass? They don’t deserve it. The deserve WWE. And they got it.
Have these folks heard the lyrics to Cardi B’s song “WAP”? The song, which the Los Angeles Times called “delightfully raunchy,” was number one on the Billboard Charts and streamed 93 million times within the first week. Go ahead, read the lyrics if you dare, then embrace the offensive fact that the average teen knows them by heart. And that the singer of them endorsed Biden.
When Biden, the candidate who has said “the soul of our nation is at stake” in this election, decided to be interviewed by this vile chanteuse, he didn’t just try to speak to a new demographic. He legitimized Cardi B and her message, elevating it to the level of accepted, mainstream culture. That’s the culture Biden brought to the debate last night?
Funny, the people who have concocted evidence and lied to perpetrate investigation after investigation after investigation of Trump, have called him, without evidence or cause, a racist, traitor and criminal, impeached him without any evidence but solely on the basis of rumor, innuendo, hearsay and lies and accused him of being personally responsible for every COVID19 death, expected Trump to walk into the debate and respect “decorum”.
Democrats have destroyed decorum. Hopefully, after they are politically wiped out, decorum can return. But not until Democrats learn to respect it.
@Deplorable Me:
Yep. I watched the entire debate, and President Trump was the same man that I voted for.
He doesn’t shift with the winds of what’s popular, he fights for what’s right.
Sure, he can be a bit crude, so what? He gets things done.
@Petercat: What is more crude than calling someone a racist without any basis in fact? What is more crude than weaponizing impeachment for purely political purposes? As far as I am concerned, Trump is far more restrained and civil than the Democrats deserve.
History has a tendency to repeat itself when the readers or non readers to understand the consequences of action.
Homer’s, Iliad noted: “Yes, and in my time I have dealt with better men than you are, and never once did they disregard me. Never yet have I seen not shell see again such men as they were…”
paedophile joey never addressed any question put to him, he was circuitous in all of his responses. when he was trapped his handlers told mim to tell the people to vote now. Trump did battle with paedo joey and democrap wallace(registered democrap). Recall that this is no different from 2016 when he had to battle slut hillary and all three democrap moderators. Trump has fought single-handed against the communist party in America. paedo joey is at the end of his natural life span. I would be concerned on what drugs he was given before the debate.
@MOS #8541:
That is absolutely correct. He never once answered a question with any specificity. He referred to the biden plan at one point. Don’t remember if it was economic or health related. But, no discussion by the abysmal moderator to explore what the biden plan was or is.
Sleepy joe is an empty suit, except for the wire.