The first 2024 U.S. Presidential debate between incumbent Joe Biden and challenger Donald Trump was, in itself, somewhat uneventful. It was the aftermath which gave us the big surprise which now dominates headlines across the country - Democrats want Joe Biden to drop out.

The uneventfulness of the debate itself runs contrary to the current buzz in the corporate-owned legacy media, but it is an important truth to remember as we try to parse out what indeed is the strategy of the American political elite for Election Day come November.

Besides the hilarious exchange between a mumbling bumbling Biden and an uber-confident Trump over declared height and golf handicaps, both candidates performed as we had expected. And therein lies the rub.

Biden performed at least as well, if not better, than anything we've seen in the past two years, perhaps the past four. The week-long break at Camp David which Biden enjoyed, no doubt under medical supervision and with a whole team of personal trainers reminiscent of Ivan Drago's entourage, was probably a successful intervention. We can imagine the scene at Camp David: Hard facts being dished out by Biden in training (like Drago's 2100 psi punches), interrupted by long syringes into his arm filled with Risperidone (instead of anabolic steroids).

Does Biden clearly have dementia? Yes. Has it been known for years? Yes. Was this among Biden's top performances in the past four years? Also, yes. Risperidone is a wonder-drug for controlling psychotic and dissociative episodes associated with Alzheimer's, but its side effects include the very Parkinsonism that we so often see with him.

So what's going on inside America's deep state, or the DNC, or among the donor class, or the CIA, or any and all of the above? This is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

If there was anything like a surprise, it was the performance given by Donald Trump. He was polite, unobtrusive, and lacking in the over-the-top sardonicism which most definitely characterized his approaches in both the 2016 and 2020 debates. It was perhaps aimed at the very demographic which, in the present year, are 'undecided' voters. The odd debate rules which cut off the mic of the candidate 'not allowed to speak' absolutely aided Trump, (even though by most accounts it had been put in place to assist Biden), and perhaps this factor also played a role in the 'taming' of Trump.

Now these undecided voters are themselves a strange lot, which almost certainly guarantees that they are in the very category which concerned citizens would almost like to see banned from voting, or at the very least, pass a literacy test. As Americans, we have already had four years of Trump, and four years of Biden. If any would-be customer at the ice-cream line is still asking for tiny pink plastic spoon samples of either candidate, perhaps it's just that ice-cream categorically isn't for them, and they ought to stay home.

Be that as it may, Trump came off cool-headed, and collected. Naturally, both candidates are prone to cite figures and statistics which reflect particular ways of parsing the numbers, that in turn may or may not be genuine reflections of actual reality.

It wasn't a surprise that senile Biden had difficulties remembering figures, facts, arguments, proper nouns, and English syntax, throughout the debate. Or that he would simply blank out at times, mouth agape, spittle forming at the corners, looking confusedly at his podium, his shoes, or imaginary objects in his periphery.
The insufferable Cenk Uygur, an unconvincing actor cum two-bit salesman, went so far as to blame CNN for using a split screen when Trump was speaking. This is because as Trump was speaking, instead of just cutting to/framing Trump, they continued to show the candidates side-by-side.

Cenk wasn't upset that we have an unfit president, but that CNN didn't bother to hide it. It was reminiscent of the ongoings in abusive households when the abusers want the surrounding community to think everything at home is kosher.

CNN, by the way, is a strange media organization in its relationship with Trump. A recording released by CIA asset/operative Tucker Carlson a few years ago revealed CNN's then-president Jeff Zucker referred to Trump as 'the boss' in a phone call with Trump fixer, Michael Cohen as far back as 2016.

This suggested different things to different people, and could mean on the one hand that Trump was just another establishment politician, or, on the other, that there was indeed a split in the establishment and that counter-hegemonic forces up-high were backing Trump from within, i.e., "patriots are in control." The hyper-reality simulacrum in the U.S. these days is certainly off the charts.

CNN's high-intensity, unrelenting denunciations and paranoia over Trump over the years, which even made MSNBC's Rachel Maddow blush, had the "reverse" (i.e. predictable) effect of launching Trump to hero status, or at least helping him considerably along the way. It's almost as if the blowback was the goal.

Given the reality of things like this, Cenk's rant may point to something larger at play. His take seems to have been that CNN's role in this was just too convenient for Trump to not have been a matter of complicity or criminal negligence. While Cenk would probably publicly say 'negligence' if pushed, other more sinister possibilities no doubt rattled around his brain much like his peanut-sized brain rattles in his skull.

It wasn't just that the camera also stayed on mouth-frothing, mind-blanked Biden while Trump spoke. It was that Trump was allowed to use his answering and rebuttal minutes to speak to any subject he wanted without interruption. He was furthermore allowed to 'lie' (speak inconvenient three-quarter truths) without being fact-checked. Lastly, the several-minute simulcast delay in the live broadcast (only seconds are technologically required) was believed by both DNC and RNC insiders to be an 'out' which would allow Biden-friendly forces at CNN to edit, in real-time, the incumbent's performance so that we at home didn't see the ugly truth: The Emperor Has No Mind.

After four years of following an active order to gaslight the American public and the world about Biden's obviously deteriorated condition, the same print, internet, and television stenographers for power, in the harmonious unison of the Vienna Boys Choir, began suddenly to enchant us with the truth, in glorious vibrato, that Biden was not fit to run.

"And did Biden's feet, in ancient times, walk upon Washington's grass so green?"

The synchronised chorus used a particular word: PANIC. MSNBC said panic. WaPo said panic. The NYT said panic. The DNC is in 'panic'. It actually isn't, at least not because of this. Paradigmatically, yes - but this chapter in the broader story of the collapse of the Democrat Party, is characterised by its planfulness, not panic. The broader panic is that they are losing credibility in the eyes of the powers that be, whomever they are.

Somehow, and for some reason, something everyone not suffering from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) knew all along, was squeezed out of the toothpaste tube as if something new. Now, 40% of the voting population came to know something that the other 60% has known since April, 2019. The toothpaste can't go back in the tube.

There is nothing natural about this, and yet the scripted nature of the whole ordeal is the most obvious point - a point so clear, that our subject here and in the forthcoming installment(s) - will absolutely not be dedicated to establishing such basic facts.

What we want to know is what is going on in the DNC, the CIA, AIPAC, the Deep State, the Donor Class, the crony Capitalists, the Technocrats, the secret Communists, the Bankers, the Ruling Class, the Globalists, the Intel/Info Elite, (insert your own power-analysis here) or whoever or whatever is running things in the U.S. (as it's rarely if ever been measly elected officials, whom only on the brightest of days we can cleanly elect in to office). As far as terms go, the Ruling Class probably covers it all.

First, we will need to understand the relationship between competing strategies rolled out by the various would-be system managers - power juntas - and how these are presented to the ruling class as the various options: Team A with plan A, Team B with plan B, and so on, within the rubric of a broader agreed-upon grand-strategy, under which all competing management teams must frame their specific strategies, stratagems, and tactics.

Since the early 1990s, a period marked by the rise of 'third-way' politics under Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, the Western political system has been rebranded along the aesthetically and notionally progressive lines expected by that generation. However, this rebranding lacked genuinely progressive elements, (as defined by the old left), focusing instead on austerity, job outsourcing, strike-breaking, the importation of cheap third world labor, pink-washing in the polity, and regulatory tyranny masked as environmentalism. Metastatic cancer, after all, technically 'progresses.'

We can add to this two other related phenomena: a.) the rise of the World Economic Forum, mirroring the 'third-way' ideology of New Labour in the UK, and the corollary NDLC in the U.S.; and b.) rise of the so-called 'Rules Based Order', an approach to IR based on unipower/unidirectional mandates which stand opposed to international law and treaties derived from mutual consent between sovereigns.

Second, we will need to analyze the particular managerial juntas in Beltway/MIC/IC power circles, which are the various technocratic management teams which jockey for power and position within a fixed and arbitrated system of the ruling class.

Third, and providing there may be some additional requirements to numerate, we will need to look at more paradigmatically fresh grand strategy, and a whole new potential vector for competing juntas to propose specific plans within the paradigm - which the ruling class may have to entertain, being promulgated by a new team outside the framework of the various failed strategies of the prior management juntas or teams. That much, hypothetically, would refer to Team Trump.

That third question is also fascinating, because it raises the question of whether and to what extent the Western ruling class is able, planful, part of, or prepared to execute new strategies within a new grand-strategy, in the aftermath of the failure to destroy Russia, contain China, launch a bio-medically induced economic reset, and more.

In conclusion, the first 2024 U.S. Presidential debate between incumbent Joe Biden and challenger Donald Trump, while uneventful in itself, has sparked a seismic aftermath dominating headlines across the country: calls from within the Democratic camp for Biden to step aside.

Contrary to the mantra we are being hit over the head with, the debate's lack of surprises underscores critical truths, and poses for us even more difficult questions, as we analyze the American political elite's strategy leading up to November's Election Day. The real intrigue lies in deciphering the DNC's internal dynamics, and the broader competing geopolitical strategies at play and the various managerial juntas that promote them. It is here that we find the real 'panic'.

Looking forward as we continue our investigation into "The Emperor Has No Mind", the unfolding drama forces us to try to understand the DNC's response, the influence of intelligence networks, and the potential for paradigm shifts in Western strategies in the wake of rising multipolarity and the end of the U.S. as a uniquely global hegemon.
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