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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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Alright folks, the U.S. Presidential debate is coming up tomorrow night. I'm invested because I've got friends from both sides of the aisle coming, so we'll see what's going to happen...

What do you think will be the major issues discussed? Strengths for Trump? Strengths for Harris?

Outside of just 'debating skills' what do you think the policy strengths/weaknesses will be? My guesses:

  • Trump will continue to hammer strong on immigration issues
  • Abortion will still be a sore spot for Trump and Kamala will focus tehre
  • Economic issues will of course be Kamala's big weakness, Trump will pounce
  • War in Palestine will likely come up again - not sure how Kamala sees it (will she go anti-Israel?)
  • Taxes will be a thing
  • Maybe Trump will harp on government spending/inflation?

I doubt these will come up, but my personal dream is that nuclear and crypto become talking points, and Trump very publicly comes out for both. We'll have to wait and see.

So - what are you predictions my fellow Mottizens?

Harris will give bizarre word salad non answers to half the questions, but the other half she'll have a nearly flawless rehearsed answers for.

Trump will mostly ignore the questions and just go on about whatever topics he feels he's strongest in. His answers will also be too online, and assume you know what he's talking about. At some point he'll bring up the 20,000 Hattians in Ohio, but it will be in the most confusing way possible. You'll either know what he's gesturing at and nod along, or think he's an absolute crazy person.

Despite the mics being muted while the other person is talking, at some point Kamala will try to shoehorn in "I'm talking now", because the "vote blue no matter who" crowd loves it when she says that and it gets them all fired up. But in context it will make almost zero sense.

If the debate rules break down at some point like they did with Biden, and they stop muting the mics, I have no fucking clue what sort of chaos will break loose. Pretty sure Harris' entire strategy is to just bully Trump into shutting up with girlboss energy, but I'll be extremely disappointed if he lets her. But I wouldn't be shocked if the moderators put their finger on the scale and start selectively muting Trump so Harris can speak in that situation, even if it's supposed to be his time to speak, like for his 2 minute rebuttal or however they structure it.

If Trump actually accused Kamala of helping Haitians eat cats what the heck happens?

"You, and Joe Biden brought in millions of illegal immigrants, and now. Did you see this folks? They are stealing and eating cats in Ohio. True story, I couldn't believe it myself."

I think it'll be way less coherent than that. You can actually tell what's happening almost in your fictionalization. I think it'll be something where Trump just blurts out, apropos of little

"She put the Hattians on Ohio! Terrible, terrible. Many such cases." And if you know, you know. If you don't, he just sounds crazy. What about Hattians in Ohio? Was Kamala actually in any way responsible for... whatever he's talking about? He might as well be ranting about lizard people or clockwork elves.

But your paragraph doesn't have to word "cats". The cats part is something Trump could really fixate on if he gets told about it.

I know. That's the point. The last year Trump has been terrible at explaining the things he's seen on Twitter. He just blurts out some words that are kind of a sentence, and if you saw the same meme he saw, you know what he's talking about. Absent that, it's a mystery.

The only Trump I've watched lately was him getting shot and the debate. Debate Trump would talk about eating cats and say something like, "they're eating cats now, cats. People's cats. Terrible terrible people, and Kamala wanted them here "