Vastness
Bluelight Crew
LOL, god that is just so damn accurate.
Oh there's a debate happening? Damn, that's mad.
I'll try to refrain from commenting on the actual candidates too much except to say that I don't really get the focus on Biden's shortcomings, yeah he's an octogenarian who fumbles his words and is kinda old man clumsy now and then, in an ideal world you'd want someone else obviously but when we're talking about the reality of the situation, you've got a bumbly old guy on one side and... an existential threat to the future of the human species on the other. I would literally take the most decrepit, Alzheimer's ridden, bedbound, literally on-death's-door 120 year old who was kicked in the head by an elephant as a baby and thus never learned to properly talk - from like, the worst, ideally third world, most derelict, neglected nursing home I could find - or maybe just out of a dumpster somewhere - and elect him (or her) over that other damned totally morally bankrupt maniac and fully expect that the next 4 years in 'Murica would be far from perfect but without a shadow of a doubt better than the alternative.
Oops OK so I kinda failed at not commenting on the candidates but whatever. What I actually wanted to say was I really don't think debates are a very good way to judge anything... they're pure theatre. Debating is a skill that has little relation to the objective sense behind the arguments put forth by the participants. If it was to be a proper debate, you wouldn't have it be between individuals, in a short session, like a fucking boxing match or something, everyone trying to get that clever sounding jab in that actually means nothing, but makes a nice soundbite or tiktok clip, while tripping up their opponent in a way that doesn't really demonstrate anything but - again - can be chopped up and talked about endlessly by the kind of people who love to bang on about that kinda shit, ie, politicians and political aligned media institutions, and it's not a both sides thing, let's be honest, one side is just clearly eviller and dumber. Although that said, both sides do do all the stuff I just said, to an extent, because that's politics... and how fucked up the world is right now.
A real debate would be between teams of carefully chosen experts in a range of relevant fields, it would span multiple sessions, internet access would be a given as well as teams of runners to go dig up whatever other book or study from whatever dusty archive, it would be boring AF most of the time, there'd be many breaks if either side actually made a new and compelling argument for a fairly new idea while both teams researched and discussed it amongst themselves... and by the end of it you would have a fully documented and recorded evolution of a smartly argued discussion about what policies are genuinely best for the future of humanity, reasoned to a certainty with little room for dispute from anyone except the truly deranged.
It goes without saying that this kind of debate would immediately exclude large swathes of the current political elite because it requires critical thinking skills, a sense of ethics, and a sharp mind, a combination of traits which is not possessed by 99% of the current political class, as far as I can tell.
Debates arranged like sport do have a place, probably, in the world of podcasts and such, between individuals who won't on their own actually have much power to enforce their worldview on everyone else... but not to decide the future leader of an entire country...
