Let’s just surf the surface in assessing that mother of all TV debates and quickly address the topic du jour which is eating cats and dogs. First, the assessment. Yes, the debate made for good entertainment but the partisans of rational political discourse might be somewhat disappointed. Both the Caudillo and Ms. Harris proved masters in dodging in a class by themselves. I am not talking about lying and obfuscating. This is lesson 101 for aspiring politicians and should not be a surprise for adult citizens. What I am talking about is blatantly ignoring simple, precise questions. Several times, both Trump and Harris not even refused to answer but just said something, anything unrelated to the topic at hand. I find this offensive to the voters trying to form an opinion.
As to indications on how a Trump or Harris administration would govern, there were few. My “takeaway” (that’s how they talk at the UN) is threefold:
- Forget climate change. Both candidates bragged about how they gave breaks to the oil industry. The topic was fracking which Harris is now for, because of the narrow margins in frack-friendly states. Even before the race was on, Bernie Sanders was the only one who urged the left to “take on Big Oil”, but he too now tones down. In his pro-Harris encouragement this week he touted her (fairly few, fairly vague) little-man-small-business program elements and urged her to advocate expansion of Medicaid. But he kept mum on oil.
- Gun power. Mao famously said, “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”, and both the Caudillo and Ms. Harris adhere to the creed. They competed in who out-venerates the US military and who builds it up stronger (Harris wants to make sure that it is “the most lethal force on earth”). The idea that “security” and “stability” might be rooted in partnership, cooperation and most of all compromise between differing models of organizing societies and economies – also called “multilateralism” – was totally absent. On the mental screen of these candidates, partners only show up as “allies”, Otherwise they seem nonexistent.
- Economic warfare. Both the Caudillo and Ms. Harris competed on who is tougher on the global super-rival China. Trump wants to jack up punitive tariffs. Harris teased him for being weak on export restrictions.
Enough. On to the main issue. The topic Is not whether it is true or not that Haitian immigrants in Springfield OH are catching pets for human consumption, but rather how shocking, or bad, or unlawful such consumption really is. Where I come from, this is not shocking but “so what?”. It would be an exaggeration to say that it is customary in our neck of the woods, but it is also not unheard of. Two of my own examples attest to the fact: when I was a summer-jobbing very young student, an older colleague used to offer me slices of his slab of cured meat during the morning’s nine-o-clock break. Aeschlime weisch was das isch?, he asked me one day, translating to “do you know what you eat?” Dasch Hung. “That’s dog”. I admit that I continued my intake. After all, those slices were expertly cured. Also, when my mother asked her neighbor, Frau Wyss, on the whereabouts of their German shepherd “Aldo”, Frau Wyss, all ignoramus and naiveté, answered: dä heimer gmetzget , translating into “we butchered him”. For human consumption, to be sure. Frau Wyss offered my mom a tasting, but she refused.
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This all happened in the past century, to be sure. Tempi might be passati. However, it happened where Switzerland is at its most mediocre. Not in some very remote, incest-infested alpine glen.
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Also, in Switzerland it is legal.