Last week I told myself the attack needed to be beat back by this midweek [View all]

[Model35mech]

There has been some success in that effort.

But because this went on and on, the bashing is slowly depressing Biden support. In any other year, the conversation would be about this being a close election year. But this year it's about ignoring the worst, most dangerous candidate who is a wannbe dictator ready to facilitate a second revolution by the rightwing pundit class. And the alternate 'gotcha' stories are about whacked out medical interpretations by media and frightened democratic candidates. That has become a bashing of the democrat because he 'appeared to be suffering chronic age-related degeneration' when he was actually, suffering acute symptoms from a common illness.

That bashing has by some interpretation eroded Biden's position in the polling by a couple percent. In any other year this would be overlooked as a consequence of the polling vicissitudes in a close election. But it's not just any other year, and the minimum impact is being interpreted as a harbinger of collapse of support for Biden. And it goes on.

And as Hitler's propaganda arm well knew, if a story, essentially a lie, gets repeated long enough and loud enough it spreads as and is assumed to be strong enough to function in the place of truth. And I regret feeling that things are reaching that point. All the defense offered, including quite competent presidential performance by Biden, hasn't placed the story in the rearview mirror.

With the RNC now days rather than weeks away, the MAGA propagandists will find more and more receptive ears among the media. Rather than exposing the unAmerican extremism of Project 2025, they are likely to continue on the path of misinterpretations of Biden's locomotor agility (short stepping, limited arm swing), and impromptu speech (being flooded by thoughts & ideas amidst an answer) that has been overlooked if not forgiven in previous presidents.

I'm not suggesting caving in. In the past week, BIden has looked competent, despite hostile interpretations. And we need to move from merely defending Biden, to a serious campaign against the radical often secular authoritarianism pressed on us by the GOP.

I am suggesting that everyone's consideration of Trump and the GOP love affair with cultural revolution needs to become openly hostile, and we need to be much more assertive in presenting the case of the clear and present danger. In the hybrid war of modern politics, we need to swamp the media messaging and build crowds of dissenting protestors projecting perhaps the most important alternate narrative since 1858. The GOP is out in the open about completing the final acts of the culture war, which intends to destroy the federal system as functioning government and establishing one-party, right-wing, authoritarian control of the nation in its place.