Was your Tuesday super?

Warning – a random post on some political musings.

I don’t know much about politics, but it looks like it’s coming down to Biden or Sanders vs. Trump.

Three childhood friends of mine and I discuss the news in a text thread. Lately I’ve been getting a little more combative, which I don’t like. But I appreciate the space to discuss things without worrying if it will offend, be wrong, or get launched into twitter immortality in a bad way.

We all dislike Trump and think he’s a dishonest con man who is doing great harm to the country. One is a libertarian. Three of us are varying degrees of left of center, whatever center means these days.

My three friends seem to be settling on Biden. I think Biden is a terrible candidate for a lot of reasons. I think he is clearly experiencing cognitive decline, and I’m tired of being told that it just sounds that way because he deals with a stutter. There’s a difference. I also think he lies, a lot. For example, he’s claimed a few times during the campaign that he got arrested trying to visit Nelson Mandela in South Africa. It never happened. He has since explained that he used the word arrest in the context of having one’s movement impeded or restricted. There are worse reports about his civil rights activism claims.

“When I marched in the civil rights movement, I did not march with a 12-point program,” Mr. Biden thundered, testing his presidential message in February 1987 before a New Hampshire audience. “I marched with tens of thousands of others to change attitudes. And we changed attitudes.”

More than once, advisers had gently reminded Mr. Biden of the problem with this formulation: He had not actually marched during the civil rights movement. And more than once, Mr. Biden assured them he understood — and kept telling the story anyway.

~ Matt Flegenheimer, New York Times

I told my friends that dumb, worn out political cliché – that I didn’t want to give control of nuclear weapons to a person I think is experiencing cognitive decline, lies casually and frequently, and supported the Iraq War. One of my friends then asked who I trusted more with nukes, Biden or Trump. I could hear his voice in that text – please don’t say Trump.

I replied by first apologizing for introducing that stupid argument into the discussion. But I followed it up by saying that from my perspective, Trump has a much better stance on military interventions and adventurism than Biden. I think we’ve got close to four years of evidence suggesting that Trump does view military interventions as foolish. I believe there’s a significant risk that he’ll bumble his way into a conflict, but his administration is closer to getting us out of Afghanistan than Bush or Obama ever got. Trump also resisted hawks like Bolton on Iran.

Again, I don’t trust Trump at all. I think he’s a bad leader, dishonest, and a climate change denier. He doesn’t provide a vision oh how tomorrow will be better for all Americans.

In the text thread I threatened not to vote for Biden. I’m all talk. I’ll vote for the Democrat who faces Trump.