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64 points
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330 million people in the US and both parties are going to run a candidate who should, by rights, be considered medically unfit for office.

I hate it here.

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67 points

“The President in particular is very much a figurehead — he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had — he has already spent two of his ten presidential years in prison for fraud.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

One of my favorite books, but depressing people were pointing shit out 50 years ago and society at large is still ignoring it today.

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35 points

It’s obvious from this excerpt that Adams was mostly talking about British Prime Ministers, who are elected by the government and do not wield much (if any) power beyond that of being a figurehead. Of perhaps the Royalty, who aren’t elected but hold even less power and are even more of a distraction.

The US president, by contrast, is not elected by the government and has a shit-ton of power, and increasingly so as the US congress is less and less able to govern due to Republican infighting. The US president can start and win a foreign war in less time than it takes congress to even form an opinion on the matter.

Zaphod spent two years in prison for fraud, meanwhile the US president is protected by more military firepower than literal nukes and has a chain of succession longer than most Kings because the US government literally cannot function without a President.

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3 points

Adams was mostly talking about British Prime Ministers, who are elected by the government and do not wield much (if any) power beyond that of being a figurehead

That’s not true though.

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1 point

But then several books later we see the person who’s really in charge and he was great

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52 points

Do you have any proof at all that Biden is mentally unfit, or are you just repeating what TikTok says?

All I see is that he’s old, his stutter has gotten worse, and he tripped over a sandbag once.

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26 points

his stutter has gotten worse,

He was a favorite in the 1988 presidential primary because he was such a a great public speaker…

He got over his stutter when he was a child, and a stutter doesn’t make someone say something completely different than what they meant to. Hell, he wasn’t even doing it while Obama’s VP, and he was in his 70s then.

Stop pretending he just has a stutter, he’s 80 years old and he gets confused sometimes. It’ll happen to all of us if we’re lucky to live that long.

That doesn’t mean he’s still fit to be presidet, and he sure as shit isn’t the best option for a Dem candidate even if he is mentally fit for office.

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17 points

He was a favorite in the 1988 presidential primary because he was such a a great public speaker

Were you alive back then? As I remember it, he was a perennial also-ran because he couldn’t help but stay stupid shit now and then. It’s as if the word “Gaffe” in politics was invented to describe stupid things Joe Biden said. And saying stuff like that stopped campaigns cold back then. (remember when Howard Dean’s campaign got killed over screaming the wrong way?)

But then Trump happened, and all of a sudden saying stupid shit all the time was no longer a liability.

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-29 points

In 2020, his campaign had to stop scheduling evening events with Buden because he would start sundowning. He’s an 80 year old man who is clearly starting to show signs of his age.

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24 points
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I agree with you that he’s showing signs of his age, but isn’t it possible he simply gets tired by 8PM, and since hes the boss, he can simply say “Dont schedule me for late nights thst arent necessary”?

There’s a whole lot of daylight between that and “sundowning”.

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12 points
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Source?

Edit: 1 day later. There is no source. Consensus wins. They pulled it from their ass.

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-33 points

My favorite part about all this is both sides just kind of ignoring that their candidate can’t string together a coherent sentence, gets confused a lot, and mistakes people for others all the time as if those aren’t signs of cognitive decline.

Cheers. Thank you for doing your part to ensure this never changes.

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48 points
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Here’s an excerpt from the very beginning of Biden’s speech two weeks ago:

In the winter of 1777, it was harsh and cold as the Continental Army marched to Valley Forge. General George Washington knew he faced the most daunting of tasks: to fight and win a war against the most powerful empire that existed in the world at the time.

His mission was clear. Liberty, not conquest. Freedom, not domination. National independence, not individual glory.

America made a vow. Never again would we bow down to a king.

And here’s an except from Trump’s speech from his most recent rally just a few days ago:

By the way, they never report the crowd on January 6. You know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley … did you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it? All of it, because of lots of things, like Nikki Haley is in charge of security, we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, national guards, whatever they want. They turned it down.

Biden is old, just like Trump. Nobody denies that. But surely you aren’t trying to “both sides” this one by equating the two mentally or physically, right?

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17 points

I don’t see anyone ignoring it. In fact, it appears to be all some folks can talk about.

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