One always reads the newspaper in a fit of irritability. So imagine, dear reader, how painful it is to return to newspaper articles and try to extract the pith (or ‘take the piss’ as we now more medically and less lispingly say). The subject today is the recent ABC televised debate between Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. I usually tend to check three sources of news, which is perhaps a bit negligent of me, but it gives me a loose sense of what is going on: I read the Guardian for the standard absurd lines which are probably the-stating-of-the-obvious for everyone I used to know at university in the 1990s; I read the Spectator to try to hold falteringly onto the hope that there is sense and civilisation of a sort carrying on within the Overton frame; and I read the Sceptic just to keep up with whatever it is I really should know about and would have missed otherwise – not being on Twitter.
And so we find that the Guardian yesterday had a profusion of pieces: a clot of articles so great it threatened to give any reader of the newspaper a stroke. Let me simply quote some headlines:
- ‘How the Trump-Harris debate played out on social media: “Maga mad libs’”‘
- ‘Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris for president in post signed “childless cat lady”‘
- ‘Harris targets Trump for falsehoods on abortion and immigration in fiery debate’
- ‘Harris’s powerful abortion stance and Trump’s fact-checks: key takeaways from the debate’
- ‘Prosecutor Kamala Harris put Trump on trial, but the court of public opinion can be fickle’
- ‘Harris delivered a “masterclass” debate. Will it change the race?’
- ‘Who won Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s first debate? Our panel reacts’
- ‘Kamala Harris, unlike Donald Trump, was well prepared for this debate – and won’
- ‘Trump’s dour negativity contrasted with Harris’s optimism about America’
- ‘Fact-checking Trump’s debate claims: from abortion to Project 2025’
- ‘Trump Media drops to fresh stock market low after presidential debate’
- ‘Harris clearly beat Trump – not that you’d know it from the Right-wing media. Shame on them’
- ‘Trump campaign publicly claims debate win but privately express skepticism [sic, or perhaps I should say sik]’
- ‘Republicans dismayed by Trump’s “bad” and “unprepared” debate performance’
- ‘The Guardian view on the U.S. Presidential debate: Kamala Harris’s triumph isn’t transformative, but it was essential’
Good God. At least 15 articles. I think I innocently read four or five of them. I read the rest out of duty. So let’s examine some of them.
Canon wrote that Trump “spewed misinformation”, was “fact-checked”, and “spouted salacious and sometimes racist claims about immigrants”. Gambino quoted Gavin Newsome: “She kept looking in the camera, talking about you, talking about me, talking about the American people, talking about the issues they care about, and he was talking about dogs, and he was talking about crowd sizes and his grievances and his little pity party and his victim mindset. It was a terrible night for him, but it was, most importantly, a great night for the American people.” Her report was otherwise fairly balanced. It ended by observing that Taylor Swift had endorsed Harris on Instagram. Sullivan, who devoted an article to Swift’s endorsement, quoted Swift as saying that “the simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth”. Robert Tait quoted some Republicans, including Trump’s former rival Chris Christie, as saying that Trump was not prepared. This line was echoed in another piece by Rebecca Solnit, who offered the balanced analysis that Harris “spoke in lucid paragraphs that were clearly the result of careful preparation”, but shared the stage with “the adjudicated rapist who spoke in loose phrases that flapped and looped and circled around and usually reverted to some version of” anti-immigration politics.
The Guardian panel was asked who won. This is amusing but you must be patient. First member of the panel: “Harris prevailed. Harris won the debate.” Second member of the panel: “Harris commanded the stage. While Harris sought to uplight and empower, Trump resorted to divisive language.” Third member of the panel: “Harris won easily. Trump… confused… angry… narcissistic… authoritarian.” Fourth member of the panel: “Harris won the evening and the debate.” Fifth member of the panel: “Harris dominated the debate. Trump… clutched at bigoted straws.” Sixth member of the panel: “All Harris had to do on Tuesday night to be celebrated by the media was to occupy it and string together sentences generally recognised as English. She managed to do that.”
I hope you persisted to the sixth. The Guardian sensibly placed this bit of free thinking at the bottom of the page, hoping that everyone would have been vaccinated into sweet sleep by the five kamala-lullabies before they reached this spiky protein hit. I should record the sixth panellist’s name so we can pay homage: Bhaskar Sunkara.
Back to the usual line was Brockes, who could not believe that other newspapers cared to differ with Guardian editorial standards. She quoted the Telegraph expressing some reluctance to admit that Harris won. And she also quoted the Daily Mail saying that both were “pathetic”. Brockes however, was unimpressed with this impressive display of scepticism, calling it “cognitive dissonance”, and calling Trump a “lunatic”. Best of all was Robert Reich who came in late with the sort of diatribe that makes me wish I was on the Guardian shilling (or on the Guardian, shilling): “blubbering idiot… lies… shambolic… failure… belligerence… ageing, cantankerous white man… mess of a human being… raging fount of grievance…personal malignancy… bottomless negativism.”
I should say that I listened to the debate and thought that everyone did as well as could be reasonably expected: which is not very well. How well would you do? How well would I do? I can speak quite well when lecturing; but I doubt it would transfer very well to a debate. Trump is the master of the homily and digression: no one on God’s earth should ever have supposed that Trump is ever going to be the master of a brief or exhibit forensic accuracy. He is a trumpet-blower and a powder-monkey and a town-crier: he is not a barrister.
The Spectator also mostly told us, in articles by Kate Andrews, Amber Duke and Charles Lipson, that Trump lost the debate. Not great. Less amusing to read than the Guardian pieces, which at least showed spirit.
Who won the debate? I have four answers.
First answer. Trump won the debate.
Against the media consensus that Harris won the debate, I recognise that politics is entirely subjective, and if I am forced to take sides I take the side of the man who thinks for himself, is more amusing, and is more or less aware that there is a glitch in the Matrix: also that Kamala Harris may be one such glitch. I admit that this is not a very sceptical answer. Fear not. The next three answers are more sceptical.
Second answer. No one won the debate.
How can one ‘win’ a debate? There are no points. There was no audience, who expressed a preference before the debate and then another preference afterwards. There was no phone-in. Hitting was not allowed. There was no possible metric except the one the Guardian and Taylor Swift mentioned, ‘truth’. To which we have to say, as Pilate said, speaking as a man-of-the-world, “What is truth?” Jesus did not answer, but we suppose he at least could have done. Whereas one would not like to trust Rebecca Solnit or the ABC fact-checking moderators with an answer. The whole thing is a circus of motes and beams.
Third answer. Trump won the debate, Harris won the debate, both Trump and Harris won the Debate, neither Trump nor Harris won the debate.
The third answer should always be the cleverest one. Have you heard of the catuskoti of Nagarjuna? Nagarjuna was a Buddhist philosopher, an adept of the Mahayana sect. He was an extremely clever casuist. His version of scepticism was not simply the epoche of the Greek sceptics. The Greek sceptics like balancing two propositions, or the supposed truth and falsity of one proposition, and declaring that they were equal in status. But the ancestor of the sceptics, one Pyrrho, arranged the original sceptical insight into a fourfold chant: he said that of any proposition, “it no more is than it is not or it both is and is not or it neither is nor is not”. Pyrrho went to India with Alexander and may have picked this argument up there: or taught it to the Indians – no one knows – or perhaps they were both taught it by a Scythian sage. But it is the same argument that Nagarjuna used a few hundred years later when he wrote arguments of the form “all things exist, all things do not exist, all things both do and do not exist, all things neither do nor do not exist”.
This sort of casuistry appears, at first sight, to be a cause of logical exhaustion. But the purpose was, at least for Nagarjuna, to intensity the Buddhist’s awareness that, even in following the Buddha, he might be attached to something, namely, the Buddha, and that this might be a cause of suffering. Buddhists were (and are) famous for the distinction between nirvana, the world of indifference, and samsara, the world of attachment, frustration and suffering, that is, the ordinary world. Nagarjuna was the philosopher who paradoxically took this distinction and argued that nirvana was samsara and samsara was nirvana. What he meant was that anyone who attempted to hold onto or define or enter nirvana had fixed it and therefore lost it, and that samsara was in fact the same world as the world of nirvana but experienced in suffering and attachment rather than experienced in the right way.
Anyhow, all that aside, it is a pretty good argument. Your friend says, “Harris won the debate.” You suck on your briar, and after a pause, say, “Yes. Harris won the debate, Trump won the debate…”
“Pardon…”
“Both Trump and Harris won the debate…”
“Er…”
“And neither Trump nor Harris won the debate.”
That’ll be the best pipe you ever smoked.
Fourth answer. Nick Clegg
No one in the entire history of the world — with the singular exception of the Right Hon. Sir Nicholas Clegg — has ever ‘won’ such a debate. And Clegg only won because he was a third candidate, with both David Cameron and Gordon Brown taking it in turns to appeal to him: “I agree with Nick.” If only RFK had been there, alongside Trump and Harris, he would have won the debate. But since he wasn’t, the correct answer is “Nick Clegg”.
Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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Honestly, how many more years will lockdowns be blamed for lazy bums being workshy, or irresponsible parents not making sure their kids are in school?
Also, perhaps somebody in the know can answer me this but, I was under the impression in the UK you had to attend the dole regularly and provide proof you were actively looking for work. Is this no longer the case? Is languishing at home, collecting benefits now a lifestyle choice?
Surely people should be made to work in warehouses, factories or in the fields harvesting caulis in the cold, and if they turn their noses up they get their dole money stopped? Beggars can’t be choosers and even if it’s a crappy job it’s a foot in the door and you can surely look for something better once in employment. This article reads like working in the UK nowadays is optional.
My sentiments exactly!
“I dont feel like coming to work today”
“Are you ill?”
“Not really, just fed up”
“OK, your sacked, ill make sure you’re paid all you’re owed to date, bye”
That was in my day!
I’ve posted this on similar posts on FB (and possibly here, I can’t remember) but what are we asking the young to work for?
It was bad before COVID but the huge inflation during and since mean other than those with wealthy parents most will never own their own home and the rental markets such a mess even a secure rented home is rare.
Blair’s ridiculous plan for 50% to attend university has led to huge numbers attending who are taking unsuitable or unnecessary degrees.
However because that’s become the norm job’s that don’t “need” a degree (police is an obvious example but there’s plenty more) advertise for them so it becomes a self fulfilling loop.
The employment market has changed and is continuing to do so and with improvements in AI and automation long term employment prospects are bleak for the young.
The tax burden is the highest since the war and will keep rising. Along with the overall cost of living.
The young are taxed to pay the (increasing) pensions of the old while at the same time being told they won’t get one when they get there.
I’m 42, work hard/long hours (including in the past warehouse, factories and cutting caulis) and I own my own home (2 years left on mortgage). If I didn’t have that I seriously doubt I’d work the way I do/have previously…
To be clear I’m in favour of (and expect) people to work. However as I said at the start, what are they working for? I’m realistic enough to understand people need an incentive to work for.
As I’ve said to my dad (67) on several occasions when we discuss this matter, the world he grew up in and raised me for has gone.
It’s a shame that people feel like that
I am very much in a bubble – we employ lots of young people who earn a very good living – they are lucky enough to be able to do the work, and they work hard. But we are a small firm. What I have heard and seen about larger firms, which seem to be more common in many sectors because of consolidation, often seems awful to me – talent and hard work are not always recognised or rewarded
Back when I was 18 college wasn’t going well and my manager at my part time supermarket job was aware and he spoke to the store manager. I was pulled into the office on my next shift and offered a full time job as his (additional) assistant manager.
I took it and had to work hard but it enabled me to work up across the next 17 years and is a large part of why I’m where I am now.
That would be impossible these days due to the rigidity in structures and requirements to advertise etc.
Also it started while I was there but has accelerated since, with the move to “pay equalisation”.
When I started I was paid a lot less than the other assistant manager but he was far more experienced so didn’t bother me. By the time I left my pay rises were being held back to increase the pay of less experienced managers with smaller departments.
The days of a store manager being able to say you do a good job here’s an extra £1,000 are gone as everything needs to be fair and equal if someone (particularly if they have a protected characteristic) complains…
It’s good that you were able to work your way up. I think it’s hard for a large organization to make sure the right incentives are in place from bottom to top. Smaller companies probably don’t survive long unless they reward good performance, and the boss of a small company is surely going to look after the good staff, because his success depends on them.
I don’t know what the answer is.
I completely understand why a business with approximately 1,400 sites and 140,000 employees needs rules to maintain standards across all sites. It just doesn’t help when you’re on the wrong end of those rules…
I’m pleased your business is going well and your staff are well paid. Sadly there’s not enough companies like you (because of consolidation) to go round
I guess there are benefits to the consumer from businesses that size, and possibly benefits to staff (more job security, once you are in). But it would drive me nuts to work in one.
All the woke stuff doesn’t help, ditto the ridiculous obsession with “safety”
Mrs ToF used to work for Pizza Express. When she started, a lot of the restaurants were franchises where the owners had a lot of autonomy regarding the staff. For some reason they all got bought out, but before that certainly the branch Mrs ToF worked in was not at all “corporate” in feel but was very much a creature of the three owners. That model appeals to me more than what we’ve ended up with.
We had a Budgens where we used to live that became a franchise for a while, and it improved massively when that happened.
Ha… It’s been a “lifestyle choice” for decades…
There certainly is some degree of weight to be apportioned to lockdowns being responsible for the workshy….
The Marxist ideology is conveniently favorable to many… after all, UBI is straight out of the Marxists playbook…
Rely on the State
Be controlled by the State…..
Libertarians are a rare breed…
“I’m always surprised how few Libertarians exist!”
I’m going in that direction, in my old age…
Apparently, most interviewing these days is done online, as is claiming for benefits. Much easier just ticking boxes that sitting in front of someone and actually explaining what you have been doing to look for work.
I think one of the sure fire ways of wangling the benefits system is via the ‘mental health’ route. I think GPs are far too much of a soft touch when it comes to doling out sick notes for sackless people to pass on to the benefits office ( and if you start mentioning suicidal ideation you’re golden. Especially given how long it takes to see an actual mental health professional who’d evaluate you ) to say this person is unfit for work due to debilitating depression, or some such claptrap, so then that person knows they’re good for several months, just so long as they can keep convincing their doctor they’re too depressed to work.
The problem with this is it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for many because the longer you spend out of work the more likely you are to fall into actual depression, as everybody knows, for most people anyway, going to work even in a crummy job you might not like brings many benefits, such as increased confidence/self-respect/self-esteem, which come as a result of having responsibilities and personal accountability when you must be on shift for a certain time and fulfill your obligations to your boss throughout your workday. Keep doing that for a while then you’re more likely to get a good reference, you’ve job experience so you can maybe move on to something better where you’ll be happier.
We’ve all been there. I think my worst job many moons ago was working in a fish factory. I needed to get 2 buses to work and back and stank of fish. I lasted 6 days.
“I was under the impression in the UK you had to attend the dole regularly and provide proof you were actively looking for work.”
You are out of date.
Not since the 1970s when it was decided the unemployed were “entitled” to holidays just like everyone else and could draw their dole in advance so they could have a super time on the Costa del vino.
Claims that people on holiday weren’t available for work were contemptuously dismissed… Tory scum!
“mystified economists”
From the same team that brought us “baffled doctors/scientists”
Pay people not to work. People don’t work. It’s puzzling.
Abolish the welfare state and State-run public services and watch employment levels surge, vast improvements and decreased costs of the now privatised public services.
Every public service now undertaken by the State once was provided by tte private sector until nationalised in order to extend the power and control of the State and those running it, over the people.
Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, has promised to fix the problem, with Labour campaigning on a pledge to get Britain’s employment rate up from 75% to an unprecedented 80%.
Was the tea lady telling the truth or is it just another one of Labour’s pre election lies? And given that Thieves has raised the cost of employment in her budget I can hardly see the employment rate going up.
“Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, has promised to fix the problem”
Enoughsaid
I find some stat’ presentations annoying, this article indicated that the employment rate was 74% and fell to 47.9% a drop of 26.1%. Relatively speaking yes, (probably government figures) if you mark the drop against a potential of 100% employment. However an employment figure of 74% of population falling to 47.9% is a drop of 32% in employment. Governments tend to use relative rather than actual. ie, 2 opposed to 1 out of 100 is a relative increase of 100% or 50% reduction between the two readings, however the actual difference against the 100, is technically insignificant.
Honesty seems to be of a low order, but we all knew that, who read here.
“Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, has promised to fix the problem…”
By increasing the payroll expense – yes Rache’ll fix it.
It isn’t just the will to work it is the will to live. They’ve taken all of the joy out of life. Can’t get married anymore, can’t have sex anymore, can’t own a house. Can’t go travelling abroad or down the pub with your mates or go practicing your favourite sports activities and so even if you had a really good well paid job what the hell are you going to spend it on? You even hear of people in top jobs having to stay at home with parents or having to come to some sort of crappy living arrangement because they can’t even afford to rent. How can you expect morale to be high under such circumstances it’s ridiculous.