Canada is too cold, New Zealand is too far, Portugal is too small…I’ve always liked Ireland. And I hear good things about Costa Rica.
If only if it were easy to pull up stakes and ditch the American shit show. Watching Joe Biden last night, fumbling for words and sounding like he belonged at an old-age Bingo game, brought to mind history narratives about the demise of the depleted German Weimar Republic in 1932.
He allowed the convicted felon to lie and lie again with shameless impunity, and that was unforgivable. TV debates are all about visual performance and first impressions – that’s just the way it is, in our superficial culture – and on those bases alone, the felon won.
Does that boost the felon’s bid for a fascist takeover? At minimum, he sure didn’t hurt it. As Bill Clinton once warned, “When people are feeling insecure, they’d rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right.”
President Biden, just when we needed him to mop the floor with his malevolent foe, was basically right on substance – when we were able to understand what the hell he was saying. But his delivery was so weak that it was often painful to listen. Starting with the fact that his voice was worse than Vito Corleone’s after being shot. And the fact that sometimes he wandered aimlessly in search of the right noun and verb.
Debates can be won or lost in the opening minutes, when the TV audience is biggest. That’s when Biden had an unfortunate brain fart (it sounded much worse than it reads). He said that if billionaires pay their fair share of taxes, “we’d be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do – childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the – with – with – with the Covid. Excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with – look, if – if – we finally beat Medicare.”
Even when Biden was teed up to trounce the felon on issues like abortion (the felon bragged again about ending Roe v. Wade), Biden got lost in the weeds, and worse:
“This is the guy who says the states should be able to have it. We’re in a state where in six weeks, you don’t even know whether you’re pregnant or not, but you cannot see the doctor or have your – and have him decide on what your circumstances are, whether you need help…Look, there’s so many young women who have been – including a young woman who just was murdered and he – he went to the funeral. The idea that she was murdered by a – by –by an immigrant coming in, and they talk about that. But here’s the deal, there’s a lot of young women who are being raped by their – by their in-laws, by their – by their spouses, brothers and sisters, by – just – it’s just – it’s just ridiculous. And they can do nothing about it.”
So, in the middle of a middling response on abortion, Biden somehow veered onto the immigration issue, in an apparent (but incoherent) attempt to refute the felon’s demagoguery about a migrant crime wave. All the president needed to do, on abortion, was to attack the felon for restricting women’s freedom. That’s the thematic narrative Dems have been popularizing for months. Biden couldn’t do it.
I could wear out my fingers listing all of the felon’s toxic lies and refuting each in turn – for instance, “they have some states passing legislation where you can execute the baby after birth” (there’s no such legislation); his claim that Nancy Pelosi turned down an offer of 10,000 National Guard troops on Jan. 6 (that never happened); his claim that he sent Guard troops to Minneapolis to quell the George Floyd riot (he didn’t); his claim that “everybody” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned (two-thirds of Americans wanted it preserved); his incessant claim that countries are “emptying prisons and mental institutions” and sending them to America as migrants (he has zero proof); his claim that the world “laughs at” America and doesn’t respect us (the exact opposite is true) – but his dark genius is to bellow his bullshit until it looks like telegenic truth. Especially when the president seems too overwhelmed to keep up, much less refute with vigor.
And when the age issue was raised near the end of the debate – the question to Biden: “How do you address concerns about your capability to handle the toughest job in the world well into your 80s?” – he waded into the weeds about…microchips: “We’ve – by the way, we brought an awful a lot of people – the whole idea of computer chips. We used to have 40 percent of the market. We invented those chips. And we lost it because he was sending people to cheap – to find the cheapest jobs overseas and to bring home a product…I convinced Samsung to invest billions of dollars here in the United States. And then guess what? Those fabs, they call them, to – to build these chips, those fabs pay over $100,000…”
There were so many good ways to answer the age question: Pointing out, for example, that he at least is defending democracy while his aging felonious foe has authoritarian intentions (Biden never mentioned Project 2025, not once). Or pointing out that when we elect a president, we also elect a team – and it just so happens that Biden’s seasoned team has delivered on substance and takes governing seriously.
What happens next, within the Democratic ranks, is anyone’s guess. I suppose that the Dems who aren’t prone to panic will tell themselves that it’s “only June,” that memories fade fast in amnesiac America, and that an “open” Democratic convention, sans Biden at the helm, will plunge the party into chaos. Maybe they’re right. But unless or until the news gets better, I for one will plot my fantasy escape.
In fact, I just found a great two-bedroom in Lisbon for 850,000 euros. “Minutes from the river.” Garage parking included!