Considering Joe Biden

Considering Joe Biden

Joe Biden presents as having symptoms of a degenerative neurological condition, whether or not his doctors have named it, and whether or not that name is Parkinson’s. His symptoms are visible to the public; also audible to the public when he speaks. His decline has seemed steeper over the past year, from 2023 to 2024. Photo ops of the Bidens riding their bikes were still published in 2023, and I didn’t find them on a Google search of news dated 2024.

Biden is possibly in physical danger from the sheltering he’s being given. He has been wearing dress shoes, for the optics (?) among fellow leaders at the NATO summit this week, while reportedly advised to wear rubber-soled shoes for stability.

In order to communicate, neurons use chemical messengers called neuro-transmitters. Neurotransmitters send information between neurons by crossing the space between them, called the synapse. Normally, neurons in the substantia nigra produce a neurotransmitter known as dopamine. Dopamine is critical for movement and it helps transmit messages within the brain to make sure muscles produce smooth, purposeful movement. Loss of dopamine results in abnormal nerve firing patterns that impair movement. By the time Parkinson’s is diagnosed, most people have lost an estimated 60 to 80 percent of their dopamine-producing cells in the substantia nigra.

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

Parkinson’s, or any related disease, interferes with the nervous system’s normal communication, so that the patient’s movements may not be intended or expected. Falls don’t occur in slow motion. A fall takes just a second, and no one close can rush in and prevent it. When someone’s head strikes a hard surface, the injuries can be serious or fatal. A cane would be sensible; the fear of looking weak in public should have no role to play.

Meanwhile, supporters of Biden on the “nothing to see” side, are misstepping badly by calling names: “bedwetters”; “elitists”. (Why elitists? What does that mean in this context? It reads like a misguided notion of “turning things around” on the GOP by using their tactics; or of hoping the GOP’s imaginary working class types, the Crying Men, will be attracted by invoking their enemy.) These Democrats might say they aren’t referring to voters, that the names are for members of their leadership, but Biden voters are frustrated and dismayed. Anyone who worries and wishes Biden would quit, will feel personally insulted by these terms.

Voters who favor democracy over fascism are being burdened with a rare demand, of extraordinary patience—asked not only to ignore the tiptoeing around the eye-witnessable, but to consider ourselves bothersome for wanting answers. And other nations can’t be coerced into the game of “nothing to see”; the friendly and the unfriendly alike have to weigh their own country’s interest above America’s.

Ture, if Biden had spent his whole career shouting accessible phrases, if his public speeches and statements had never consisted of more than stock lines repeated, he might appear “unchanged” as he ages. It isn’t that Trump displays great, or adequate, cognition; it’s that his supporters’ Kool-Aid doesn’t change flavor, and they drink it uncritically.

So, it isn’t that we who would not vote for Trump in the span of 10,000 universes will decide to insanely vote for him because Biden has gone downhill. It’s that we’re afraid—of a police state that seeks retaliation, of a “traditional” society dangerous to women, of a culture that doesn’t want to stop mass shootings or climate change, but encourages the mechanisms of both. We don’t want a Woodrow Wilson, being pushed beyond his capacity, because of the stubborn insistence that only he can save the day.

[Wilson suffered a bout of Spanish flu in 1919, but was aggressively dosed by his physicians until propped up enough to return to Paris Peace Conference meetings, because Wilson’s advisors believed the League of Nations would never come into being without his personal leadership.]

(2024, Stephanie Foster)