“MY HEAD HURTS”

SEPTEMBER 10, 2024 – I say it after each “presidential debate” I watch on TV: “My head hurts.” This time around my head really hurt. For the first few minutes, I blamed both candidates, but as the event proceeded, one of the candidates was responsible for the vast majority of my pain and eventually, 100% of it. The other candidate wound up as an adult dose of Tylenol.

What gave me the hurt wasn’t so much the Republican candidate’s usual smörgåsbord of wild superlatives and jacked-up hyperbole. It was the crassly negative fear-mongering, which is the oldest trick in the book. Sadly, the oldest trick isn’t one that inspires hope or builds confidence. It certainly isn’t a quality one associates with enlightened leadership.

I’ve known lots of Chicken Littles, or Big Chickens, but the Republican candidate is not among them. He’s too self-absorbed, too Narcissistic to worry about much of anything other than ratings and crowd sizes. His psychological disposition is a problem, because one way to boost ratings and crowd sizes is to stir up the cauldrons of fear—to hell with scorched bystanders.

During this evening’s performance, the man from Queens who would be king was fixated on the millions of illegal aliens “from 168 countries” who are crossing our southern border. (“They say it’s 11 million,” he said. “I say it’s 21 million, but it’s actually a lot more.”) This was his make-believe red meat of choice, and he couldn’t seem to let it go, even when it had nothing to do with the question at hand. I began to see him as a large dog in a fenced-in yard with all sorts of things to fetch, sink its teeth into, chew up, destroy. But his favorite object to chew with a growl was a larger-than-life plastic and leather Porterhouse steak.

Without a shred of evidence, the Republican candidate made the preposterous claim that crime rates around the world are dropping because all the crooks and crims are coming to the United States and committing heinous crimes all over this country and driving crime rates here through the roof. We should be scared. Except . . . according to extensive research (Stanford; CATO Institute; The New York Times; The Marshall Project) crime rates among illegal aliens are much lower than among U.S. citizens.

Not scared enough of illegal aliens? Did you know they’re killing and eating people’s pets? It matters not that the falsehood has been credibly debunked.

The fear-mongering over immigration continued with an added economic argument: illegal immigrants are taking away our jobs. Except . . . they’re not. Just ask the employers who depend on illegal migrant workers to fill a demand unmet by legal residents. (And if the fear is of legal immigrants “taking our jobs,” we’re no longer talking about illegal immigration.) Besides, this economic element of the fear-mongering is based on the invalid premise that an increase in the labor supply is bad for the economy—when there is currently a labor shortage.

More fear-mongering was applied to the abortion issue. Again, under the rubric of “repeat a falsehood enough and it becomes accepted as truth,” the Duly Defeated ranted that Harris and Walz want to allow abortions in the ninth month of pregnancy and even after a baby is born (!). This again is patently preposterous, and nowhere is either H or W on record proposing, favoring or even contemplating such.

If his audience wasn’t scared enough by all of the foregoing, if they were gun-owners, they had something else to fear: confiscation of all firearms. Again, not a scintilla of evidence that H or W has ever contemplated any such move (let alone have or ever acquire the power to do so as president/vice president).

But the worst fear-mongering was the most general: America has been destroyed by the Biden-Harris Administration. “Destroyed”? Really? By what gauge? According to what evidence?

Amidst all the fear-mongering I realized that in desperation the Republican candidate is going full-on negative. Among many people, negativity, apparently, sells as well as fear-mongering. Unfortunately, neither tactic addresses needs or inspires confidence.

To stop my head-ache, I had to avoid the commentators who would dissect the “debate” after the event. I didn’t need to be told that the former president is unfit for anything except permanent retirement. For what he lacks in empathy, knowledge, understanding and temperament, he reflexively compensates with bluster, negativity and fear-mongering. He is a human black hole, and unfortunately, his gravitational pull has kidnapped the entire Republican Party. In a classic case of the Stockholm Syndrome, the hostages have turned in favor of their armed-and-dangerous captor. How great a ransom will they cheerfully pay—for their party’s demise and to the country’s detriment?

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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson