https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flp7gKg5G4E&t=1s

The presidential “debate” was theater. Slo-Joe tried to run a scripted set piece, President Trump went in to disrupt the staged presentation. Since he was responding to challenges, he apparently went in “cold” showing responsiveness and mental agility. I’d want Presidernt Trump facing off the challenges to the U.S. instead of Biden who’d be waiting for the committee to tell him what to do. The President sees the details of the game which is how the Israeli/Arab, Serbia/Kosovo deals were made. He avoided the Iran/IRGC war trap and waited to answer with the hit on General Soleimani which helped with the conflicts in Iraq and Syria. The air show at Dier ez Zor (variously spelled), Syria was prime gamesmanship without a hostile word being spoken. The “debate” just allowed him to show his style.

There never was going to be a “debate”. The President may have missed a few snappy returns, but Obama left his pen for Executive Orders and Trump hired Kayleigh to handle the details with the “media”. I liked the show.

One more thing – I believe (without checking the transcript at the moment) that your daughter was probably referring to the Atlantic hit piece on Trump that said that several unnamed sources said Trump had called troops “losers.” Far more people who had been at that meeting – including Bolton, who hates Trump – said Trump never said any such thing. Biden’s son Hunter, the corrupt one, is very much alive, but Biden’s son Beau, who is reported as having been a good person, died of a brain tumor a few years ago. Beau was a veteran. And so Joe Biden, during the debate, said that Trump called his dead son a “loser.” Using pathos to attack Trump on a lie told about Trump.

Remember the phrase “the school of hard knocks”? I wonder if young people today ever hear it, or know what it means.

She is very pretty indeed. But as far as the “likes” go, some people who say that a lot find it quite difficult to eliminate, because it’s not necessarily used consciously. For them it’s more of a filler word such as “um,” used while thinking of how to express themselves.

Of course she laughed at me and said I was being dramatic and said life just isn’t that serious. I (commendably, for me!) didn’t come back with, “Thanks for the advice, 18-year-old who has never yet paid rent or taxes and who has lived a life of ease.” I love my girl – but her dad and I are just gritting our teeth through this fall with her.”

You probably should have said it. It might have shocked and even hurt her, and it might have cost you, but it would have been the truth, and perhaps caused her to rethink her sense of entitlement.

But, yes I know, kids at that age tend to believe, (and have been told by their state paid minders ) that the world exists for their benefit and that they are the people who really count. Because the future is us!.

Others, whether they formulate the thought coherently or not, exist to either serve them or to further their enlightened sensibilitites. Sensibilites, as you point out, ” untainted” by mercenary and grubby considerations related to survival as a free and independent being in a material world.

It’s easy to believe this until you finally have to feed yourself by offering a product or service to others who are not coerced into buying.

And of course, it is to avoid ever being exposed to just that kind of judgment and cold-eyed appraisal that so many people in every socoety devote so much desperate, if not fully self-aware, effort. Some, will commit suicide, or be willing to turn society into a homicidal termite heap, in order to avoid ever doing so..

But the important thing is that this woman’s target audience is people of her own age and younger. She is speaking the language of her generation, and that’s the right one for her to speak, if she’s going to be understood and trusted by other young people who grew up in circumstances like hers.

I thought, actually, that the unselfconsciousness of her speech added to her sincerity and credibility. More important, her courage is downright admirable. She’s at a stage in life where her reputation, career and future could be destroyed for life by doing something like this. She did it anyway, and she did it joyously.

I never watch videos that are this long. I’m a fast reader, I love the written word and I don’t have the patience for the much slower pace of a talking head on video or podcast. But I watched every word of this one, and rewound some of it to listen again. I hope others do, too, and I wish the best for this brave, thoughtful young soul.

She was shocked,a week or so ago, to hear that I am a Trump supporter, not just a Republican doomed to vote for him. Last night for the first time I began to lay out exactly why, since her position was, “I can’t vote for anyone who calls someone’s dead son a ‘loser.'” (Now, I need to go to the transcript on that, because while we intended to watch the debate, we were instead wrangling the interactions between our dog and the dog we’re dog-sitting throughout almost all of it, so I don’t know which Biden Trump was referring to – though I wouldn’t put it past him to say something like that about Beau, sadly.) But in any case, I told my daughter, “I don’t condone that kind of statement by anyone. I deplore the tone of public discourse these days. But the stakes are so much higher than whether the President is rude or uncouth – I’ll vote for Trump because, even setting aside the things he’s done as president that I actively approve of, what I see coming from the Democrats, what they’re saying they will do as well as what they’re actually doing in places where they already have full control, is so dreadful. Not just for the economy, although that’s huge, but for the nation’s spirit.” I talked about Biden’s statement that if Trump is reelected, riots will continue and grow, and that I see no other way to interpret that statement except as blackmail (“we can control the riots and will make them worse if you don’t vote for me”) or as pandering (“if I am elected, I’ll give them what they want, and you watch, they’ll go away”). She said, “Or, it means he has a better plan for dealing with them than Trump.” My answer: “That’s the pandering I’m talking about. Biden has said that his ‘better plan’ is ‘bringing them’ – the rioters – ‘to the table.’ Negotiating with terrorists, in other words. Does that sound like a good idea? Because to me it sounds both terrible and profoundly un-American.”

Of course she laughed at me and said I was being dramatic and said life just isn’t that serious. I (commendably, for me!) didn’t come back with, “Thanks for the advice, 18-year-old who has never yet paid rent or taxes and who has lived a life of ease.” I love my girl – but her dad and I are just gritting our teeth through this fall with her.