Insult or catastrophe

It's not just the debate that's a sucking chest wound

I’ve walked into CNN Center some uncountable number of times in the last three decades, and I remember the days when it was the Omni International Center, when the World of Sid and Marty Krofft lived there instead of the news organization that currently inhabits the building. Instead of Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, tonight we get…about the same thing, strictly from an intellectual standpoint.

Notably, this is the first presidential debate in a long time (like 1988) that the non-profit Commission on Presidential Debates has not hosted a…presidential debate. This debate is truly pure entertainment. I’m surprised that each side didn’t line up sponsors like stickers on a NASCAR, or that the driver wears on his Nomex suit. Now that would be funny: Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump dressed in faux-leather with “Truth Social,” “MyPillow,” and “Trump Golf” logos on one; “Dallas Mavericks,” “Washington Post” on the other.

So this is entertainment, but it’s a different kind.

I can get Aerosmith tickets at State Farm Arena across the street from the debate site for October 11 if I want to spend $500 to sit in the nosebleeds. The night after that, I can spend somewhat less to see Jeff Lynne’s ELO (I last saw them when I was 16). I can even go see AJR in July (I’m taking my youngest son). But even if I wanted to score a ticket to this event taking place less than 20 miles from my house, I could not. See, there’s no audience here, unless you’re part of the sweltering media being penned outside in 195-degree heat (well, it feels that way).

The only viewers who get into the studio are specifically invited by the participants. Trump invited his Veep-Suitors, like an episode of Pride Month: The Orange Bachelor: Sens. J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and Tim Scott, along with Gov. Doug Burgum, Ben Carson, and Reps. Elise Stefanik and Byron Donalds. Biden brought California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

CNN’s Dana Bash and Jake Tapper will serve as referees. They will have the ability to unplug microphones if either the sitting president or the former one get naughty. I’m as certain as there will be chairs breaking over heads at a WWE event that this will happen at tonight’s debate. Mic unplugging is a Chekhov’s Gun situation: guaranteed to happen.

Allow me to pivot here, because to understand my point, I need to talk about medical terms. IYKYK.

An “insult” is the cause of some kind of physical or mental injury. As Wikipedia put it, “a burn on the skin (the injury) may be the result of a thermal, chemical, radioactive, or electrical event (the insult).” Or a stroke can be a cerebrovascular insult (CVI), if you want to sound super smart to your doctor.

Then there’s a “catastrophic injury.” This is the kind of injury from which you do not recover. That doesn’t mean you die on the spot, but it means you are permanently injured in some way. An insult can heal—even stroke patients sometimes completely recover. There’s no full recovery from a catastrophic injury. The body may find other ways to operate—like Rick Allen, the drummer for Def Leppard, who drums with one arm. Rick’s not getting that arm back, but he found a way to be awesome without it.

The human body is an amazing machine. I have a friend who had four one-percent injuries, each of them catastrophic, due to a bullet wound. He’s living a good life (living being the operative term), and doing the stuff other people who never got shot do. If you didn’t know, you would never know by looking or talking to him. The body finds ways to heal itself or get around catastrophic injury. But the injury itself never goes away. For instance, you don’t get your spleen back if doctors have to remove it, etc.

Now, in a political sense, tonight’s entertainment is an insult. It’s an insult to American politics that an 81-year-old man, who at best is in a diminished state from his not-genius-level best, is facing off against a 78-year-old huckster and real estate charlatan, who for four years plagued the institutions and traditions of the presidency with his flea circus-cum-administration.

The question is, is (I sound like Bill Clinton defining “is”) what Trump did to America an insult, or a catastrophic injury? Was January 6th something from which the country can be fully recovered, or is it a permanent injury? Technically, from a legal standpoint, Congress already applied a corrective, so the legal fiction Trump’s coup was based upon cannot happen. But the election-denying, the conspiracies, the lies, these things cannot be corrected by law.

However, time has a healing power of its own. Few people are still fighting the Civil War (I’d say “nobody” but there’s bound to be some nutcase out there who says he is). Yeah, some get riled up about the Confederate battle flag, and their heritage. But nobody is out there still looking for Yankees to kill, or imprison. That war is over and nobody who fought in it is alive. The biggest catastrophic injury to our nation (600,000 dead) in its history is with us—but as history.

I am not certain that January 6th was a catastrophic wound to our nation. If Trump succeeded, sure, I’ll concede that would be catastrophic. And many people say that if he is president again, we will have more catastrophic injuries and will never be the same. But I’m not sure that’s true. I think it would be more an unending, and unpleasant, stream of insults, big and small. It would be the equivalent of a healthy non-smoker living in a house of backslid ex-smokers puffing away on their Marlboros, and also eating nothing but Little Debbie cakes and stale supermarket donuts.

Unhealthy, for sure. Disgusting, yes. But catastrophic, not likely.

With Biden, there’s little insult, except that folks who think Trump is less insulting than fringe Democrats and unhinged progressives trying to force their utopian dystopia down our throats, get lectured how they are the problem. But it’s like being forced to eat unflavored Greek yogurt for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, while sitting across the table from a guy who smells like old Depends and Ben-Gay, telling the same stories over and over again. It’s insulting, but only in a creepy, uncomfortable way.

These are the two choices in our non-binary election system. The other guy, Robert F. “Dead Worm” Kennedy, Jr., didn’t make the cut to the insult stage. He’ll have to hurl his own bombs of anti-intelligence from outside the arena. I was told that RFK, Jr. is polling around 8%, and that David Thornton will eat his hat if Worm Daddy gets that level of support in the general election. Based on the possible results of tonight’s insult to the body politic, I think David might want to start tenderizing that headwear.

Biden and Trump, and the fact that they meet under such unique circumstances, is an insult to American politics. January 6th, and many of the other things Trump did from 2017-2021 are insults, some severe, to our political and legal system. But you can’t claim everything Biden has done (student loan forgiveness, Mark 2000) isn’t an insult also.

Where plenty of people differ is which one of these two is catastrophic, and which one is a mere insult. I’d say Trump is a catastrophe, but not catastrophic in the medical sense of what he can do to the country or the world. Now, Vladimir Putin, he’s catastrophic. Xi Jinping, could be catastrophic. Kim Jong-un, certainly catastrophic potential. Iran’s cracked leaders have catastrophic tendencies. Trump? Hard to say.

But I know this—if he holds up the catastrophic card over his head tonight, people will react to it. When viewers—voters—stop seeing mere insults and start seeing catastrophic injury, you’ll see it reflected in polls. But perhaps, tonight we won’t see that. Trump has a preternatural sense of audience, and he’s unlikely to unmask himself as a villain that way.

I won’t be entertained. Prepare for political insult raised to an art form.

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