Observations on the debate over Biden

(Spoiler: I'm on Team "Don't Pressure Me To Choose a Team")

First off, please know that it is not usually my way to focus so much energy on a presidential race — my wheelhouse is all the undervalued but monumentally important state and local positions on the ballot. But with the debate about Biden’s ability to win a second term taking up all the oxygen in the room right now, a lot of folks have been asking for my opinion.

As a Libra, I have an astrological directive to weigh all the information and observations I can fit into my scales before reaching any conclusions. Here I offer you a peek into my Libra brain over the past week.

First, let’s go back back back all the way to last Thursday (was it only last week?!) to the first presidential debate of 2024.

I won’t rehash the whole spectacle, but I do want to return to my own real-time physical and emotional response that night — what my own inner compass said before it began to spin wildly, magnetized erratically within the jumbled deluge of others’ reactions.

I remember feeling panic, disbelief, nausea, rage, and an impulse to turn it off — if I no longer could see it perhaps it wasn’t really happening. But I didn’t turn it off, I watched until the bitter end. I hated every minute.

There was one moment above all others that made me want to peel my skin off. The most fiery exchange came not over Gaza or abortion or any other policy matter, but over golf. When asked to respond to concerns about their age (Trump is 78 and Biden is 81), the men devolved into a dick-measuring contest by proxy of their golf games. Ultimately, they spent 2.5 times as long discussing their swings and handicaps as they did addressing Americans’ concerns about the cost of child care. It was like a cartoon caricature combo of patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism.

I had a bestie over to watch the debate with me, and we just kept saying to each other over and over, “This is bad. This is really bad.”

Everything Trump did was enraging but expected — lying, being wildly racist, refusing to answer questions that matter to real people and instead focusing on cheap ego boosts for himself. But Biden surprised me. Except for the few minutes he spent hyping his golf game, he seemed to fade before my eyes. I kept saying aloud, “What is he doing??? What is he doing?”

Sometimes when things feel bad but I haven’t fully sorted through it all to arrive at a clear assessment or next action step, I soothe myself with humor.

This is what I posted to my Instagram the next morning:

If you are not Very Online, you might not know that this is a reference to the recent story about a Hamptons cop arresting Justin Timberlake for a DWI.

The reactions to a joke that I considered to be pretty light-hearted were fascinating. In my eyes, this joke was simply acknowledging a situation that’s pretty universally recognized as bad without making any other commentary.

On the whole, most people who responded publicly thought it was funny, but not everyone. I lost a couple followers. Someone asked, “What’s the point of posting this?” to which I responded, “Sometimes when things are bad we have to find ways to laugh,” while someone else responded: “solidarity and camaraderie.”

Another commenter said: “It’s amusing & I guess it works for you to get clicks. But disappointed you joined that team with this post.”

I think the sentiment within this comment reflects a mindset that a lot of people hold so I want to explore it a little bit.

I thought of this commenter when I spoke to a friend whose mother, a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, was enraged that anyone might possibly say anything negative about Biden’s debate performance or question his fitness as a candidate.

And then there are others who acknowledge the poor performance and brush it off with, “It’s just one bad debate!”

There is a whole “vote blue no matter who” contingent that has agreed to fall in line behind Democratic Party leadership with no questions asked. Some of these folks might see a problem but stay silent because they view speaking openly about a problem as more offensive than the problem itself. Others seem to be in denial that a problem exists at all, seeing a bad debate performance as one isolated, unfortunate incident rather than the possibility that it might be part of a larger pattern of “good days and bad days,” with the bad days becoming more common.

I hesitate a little to draw this next parallel because I’m worried my point will be misinterpreted… and yet the connection has been nagging at me, which is usually a clue that I should say the thing.

(Trigger warning: brief mentions of child abuse and suicide in the next 4 paragraphs.)

This week I was reading The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck, which is about living as your truest self by learning to be honest even (especially) when telling the truth involves resisting cultural pressures.

One day when Martha was teaching a psychology class, a mass of scar tissue in her pelvic region spontaneously ruptured and she was rushed to the hospital. Suddenly, a flood of memories she’d repressed as a 5-year-old came back, and she realized she’d been abused by her father.

At the time, Martha was doing what she calls an “integrity cleanse” — she had pledged to herself to spend an entire year not lying at all. But telling the truth about what her father had done to her would have repercussions that were not merely familial. Her father was a major figure in the Mormon church, which meant the fallout of her honesty could shake an entire institution.

Martha says: “I confided in a couple of my closest friends, both Mormon. They were sympathetic but told me I absolutely had to keep my secrets to protect the church. Not long afterward, one of them committed suicide.”

But Martha stayed in her integrity and told the truth publicly, withstanding incredible backlash from all of Mormon-kind for doing so.

A couple pages later she observes: “The imminent threat of someone abandoning group norms foments social resistance at its strongest level.”

And: “When someone embarks on integrity and refuses to look back, culture pulls out its whole arsenal of control strategies to make them drop their stupid obsession with integrity and go back to acting normal!”

I am NOT saying that Democratic party loyalists trying to get everyone on the left to ignore Joe Biden’s debate performance (and the larger questions it raised) is equivalent to the Mormon church denying child abuse perpetrated by one of its leaders.

But I AM saying that the cultural impulse behind these two attempted gaslightings is the same.

It is an impulse to protect power.

An impulse to maintain the status quo.

A rejection of change and the uncertainty that accompanies it out of a preference for the “known misery,” as neuroscientist and cultural anthropologist Mario Martinez calls it.

In short, these are the cultural impulses of white supremacy and patriarchy.

This whole “white supremacy culture” treatise by Tema Okun at dismantlingracism.org is worth a read, but I want to pull out just a few relevant characteristics to highlight here.

Tema offers this introduction:

This is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture that show up in our organizations. Culture is powerful precisely because it is so present and at the same time so very difficult to name or identify. The characteristics listed below are damaging because they are used as norms and standards without being proactively named or chosen by the group. They are damaging because they promote white supremacy thinking. Because we all live in a white supremacy culture, these characteristics show up in the attitudes and behaviors of all of us – people of color and white people. Therefore, these attitudes and behaviors can show up in any group or organization, whether it is white-led or predominantly white or people of color-led or predominantly people of color.

A few aspects of white supremacy culture that are relevant to this conversation include:

• Defensiveness

  • “criticism of those with power is viewed as threatening and inappropriate (or rude)”

  • “people respond to new or challenging ideas with defensiveness, making it very difficult to raise these ideas”

• Only one right way

  • “the belief there is one right way to do things and once people are introduced to the right way, they will see the light and adopt it”

  • “when they do not adapt or change, then something is wrong with them (the other, those not changing), not with us (those who ‘know’ the right way)”

• Paternalism

  • “those with power think they are capable of making decisions for and in the interests of those without power”

• Either/or thinking

  • “things are either/or — good/bad, right/wrong, with us/against us”

  • “creates conflict and increases sense of urgency, as people feel they have to make decisions to do either this or that, with no time or encouragement to consider alternatives, particularly those which may require more time or resources”

  • “often used by those with a clear agenda or goal to push those who are still thinking or reflecting to make a choice between ‘a’ or ‘b’ without acknowledging a need for time and creativity to come up with more options”

• Power hoarding

  • “those with power assume they have the best interests of the organization at heart and assume those wanting change are ill-informed (stupid), emotional, inexperienced”

• Fear of open conflict

  • “people in power are scared of expressed conflict and try to ignore it or run from it”

  • “when someone raises an issue that causes discomfort, the response is to blame the person for raising the issue rather than to look at the issue which is actually causing the problem”

There are a couple ways of upholding white supremacy culture. One way is overt, as Trump does with statements like: “They're taking Black jobs now, and it could be 18, it could be 19 and even 20 million people. They're taking Black jobs, and they're taking Hispanic jobs,” in reference to immigrants.

This kind of adherence to white supremacy culture is much easier to identify and condemn because it is so blatant.

But many of us are unconsciously committed to white supremacy culture. If a majority of us weren’t accidentally perpetuating cultures of white supremacy and patriarchy, how else do you explain these stats on U.S. presidents?

Thinking of these attributes of white supremacy culture, I want to return to the comment left on my Instagram post — “…disappointed you joined that team with this post.”

What a perfect example of “either/or” thinking. Suddenly I am on “that team,” disappointing this person by taking a side they view as “against us.”

I can’t be totally sure what specific “team” this person meant… critical of Joe Biden’s debate performance? Worried about his ability to win the presidential race? Making light of a serious situation? A sudden convert to MAGA? I don’t know.

I want to be very clear — I am not upset with this commenter at all. My observation that some folks are responding to the Biden-fitness debate in ways that are reflective of white supremacy culture is not a judgement of any individuals. We ALL do it — it is a systemic issue and not a personal moral failing. But it IS up to each of us as individuals to examine the ways we have been unwittingly perpetuating white supremacy culture, especially once we have been made aware of its insidious characteristics.

As someone who is trying to dismantle white supremacy culture within myself, I am keeping in mind how either/or thinking “increases sense of urgency, as people feel they have to make decisions to do either this or that, with no time or encouragement to consider alternatives, particularly those which may require more time or resources.”

I am resisting the pressure to feel rushed to join Team This or Team That, to declare that I have the answer for the appropriate path forward.

I am also resisting the pressure to ignore what I saw with my own eyes and to keep my concerns quiet out of a deference to those in power who fear open conflict.

I watched Biden’s interview with George Stephanopoulos tonight. What struck me more than anything from Biden was that he either appeared to have a genuine lack of insight into how widespread the concern is that he can win this election (he kept saying it was just media hysteria)… or he is in deep, deep denial about the worried conversations that are happening between other Democratic elected officials, activists, voters, and everyone one the left who is paying attention. [See: “people in power are scared of expressed conflict and try to ignore it or run from it” above.]

Conflict isn’t the enemy. As Angela Saini notes in The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality:

In the middle of the twentieth century, Lewis Alfred Coser, a left-wing sociologist who had fled Nazi Germany for the United States, made the argument that conflict within and between groups in societies, far from being a bad thing, is in fact what fosters social change… Friction at the edges moves the dial, helping new ways of thinking emerge.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for some new ways of thinking.

Those of us engaged in the work of change-making must not be afraid of conflict, disagreement, friction, acknowledging uncomfortable realities, course-correction. If we are to change the world, we must be open to changing our own minds and our own selves, too.

In his book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know — which is essentially a guide to being open-minded — Adam Grant has an entire chapter devoted to “The Joy of Being Wrong.” In it, he says:

Most of us are accustomed to defining ourselves in terms of our beliefs, ideas, and ideologies. This can become a problem when it prevents us from changing our minds as the world changes and knowledge evolves. Our opinions can become so sacred that we grow hostile to the mere thought of being wrong, and the totalitarian ego leaps in to silence counterarguments, squash contrary evidence, and close the door on learning.

Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe. Values are your core principles in life — they might be excellence and generosity, freedom and fairness, or security and integrity. Basing your identity on these kinds of principles enables you to remain open-minded about the best ways to advance them.

So I am not Team Biden, Team Resign, Team Fall In Line, Team Sit Out This Election, or any of the other teams that seem to be forming, at least not at the moment.

I am Team Contemplation, Team Open Discussion, Team Curiosity, Team Humility, Team Possibility.

The debate over what we should do next has become very heated. But I think what appears to be anger is actually fear that’s triggering “fight mode.”

The truth is, we are in uncharted territory for our democracy, and none of us can be 100% sure of which path will take us away from peril. So, much like ancient cartographers, we are drawing dragons in the uncharted spaces on the map of our collective future. We’re afraid of making any moves that would steer us from the safety of the known path into the dragon’s den.

But the answer is not to simply stay put without further discussion. If we don’t like how it feels to be in conflict, the answer is not to avoid conflict altogether. The answer is to change the way we engage in conflict, especially with others who share our same goal of avoiding another Trump presidency.

I heard recently that fear and anxiety cannot co-exist with curiosity. So let us approach our disagreements with curiosity. Let us hold our opinions humbly and loosely, with a willingness to abandon them if doing so means we will remain in integrity with the deeper certainty of our values. Let us be willing to experience the joy of being wrong. Let us remember that we are going to need each other, already do need each other. And let us give ourselves and one another the grace to take our time, to think creatively, and to trust the true north of our own inner compasses.

……………………………

What else I’ve been reading/watching/listening to around the presidential race:

“There’s a Name for the Trap Joe Biden Faces” by Adam Grant

“toshi, she gather me (artists talking)” by adrienne maree brown (in conversation with Toshi)

And also this video from adrienne maree brown

This video from Baratunde Thurston

“Biden Can Win—By Stepping Down” by Liz Plank

“Demanding Biden Step Down Because He Is ‘Too Old’ Is Wrong. Here’s Why,” by Sheila Callaham

This clip from Pod Save America

“‘A missed opportunity’: Groups critical to Biden’s success say they’re shaking off bad debate” by Grace Panetta, Mel Leonor Barclay, Barbara Rodriguez

“Sure, an Open Competition to Replace Biden Would Be Divisive and Chaotic, But So What?” by Ben Mathis-Lilley

“Here’s why it would be tough for Democrats to replace Joe Biden on the presidential ticket” by Stephen Collinson

“5 Terrible Reasons for Biden to Stay in the Race” by Eric Levitz