Civility Has Disappeared - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Civility Has Disappeared
by
The Bidens at the end of the presidential debate, Sept. 29, 2020 (YouTube screenshot)

It’s very late at night here in Sandpoint, Idaho. There is a magnificent silvery blue moon casting a glittering spell on the waters of Lake Pend Oreille. I am in my dining room looking at the accumulation of mail over the past few days. Nothing good.

If elected, Biden will follow his former boss as only the second president to take office propelled by men and women who hate America.

I just get bill after bill and that’s depressing. I don’t want to pretend I’m broke, but that torrent of bills is wearing me down.

Tonight was the first debate between Mr. Joe Biden and President Donald J. Trump. To put it mildly, it was discouraging to me as a citizen and as a student of politics. Herewith a few notes on the evening.

Mr. Joe Biden may not be the most ill-mannered high official of the postwar era, but he is certainly in the running. When he told the president of the United States of America to “shut up,” I could hardly believe my ears. That just isn’t done. But he did it.

He is also a scandalous braggart. He claimed that he had been in charge of pulling the economy out of the collapse of 2008. That was simply fantasy. He was vice president as of January 20, 2009. By then the Congress had enacted TARP and saved the largest banks and other corporations holding bad financial assets. The Bank of America had bought and rescued Merrill Lynch. The worst was over.

There is no doubt that Mr. Obama and his economic team did some good works after that. But I was covering the subject for Barron’s at that time and cannot recall Mr. Biden even being mentioned. Certainly he was not “in charge” of anything.

For him to claim that he was is pathological.

It’s also frightening that he refused to distance himself from the leftist thug groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter. If elected he will follow his former boss as only the second president to take office propelled by men and women who hate America.

I was also deeply disappointed in Mr. Trump. He could have made much of the fact that his three years in office saw the greatest achievements in African-American economic progress that has ever been. This was also true for Hispanic Americans. I wish he had also pointed out that his first three years saw the lowest unemployment rate in peacetime that has been measured since statistics were kept.

It was also sad that Mr. Trump did not question the horrible truth that leading Democrats have been sucking around “Minister” Farrakhan, an aging black Muslim who is by far the most outspoken Jew-hater in America right now and maybe ever.

I was dismayed indeed that Mr. Trump kept interrupting Mr. Biden and the moderator with sneering comments and that he called Mr. Biden “Joe.” (This was nowhere near as sickening as Mr. Biden’s constant fake girlish laughter at almost everything the president said. The childishness of both men was a desperately depressing commentary on the state of civility in America today.)

On the other hand, Mr. Trump hit a smashing forehand at Mr. Biden and scored a direct hit when he pointed out that no meaningful law enforcement officials at all had endorsed the former veep.

The most horrifying part of the day came after the “debate” — really a travesty of what a good debate should be — when the left-wing cable nets took a huge scoop of monkey feces and smeared them all over the president of the United States. (Just by the way, I would love to know what Mr. Biden did in 2017 to earn $11 million. It’s just amazing how much we humans love money.)

Well, it’s been a sad, chaotic day. We are in for some difficult days. Mr. Trump is no saint but he looks a lot better than Mr. Biden. If we have a Biden/BLM government coming up, we are in for some hard times.

Much much worse than today.

Ben Stein
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Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes “Ben Stein’s Diary” for every issue of The American Spectator.
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