On Trump, debates and interruption

In yesterday's pre-debate post, I posed the argument that we should cancel all presidential debates going forward.  Forever.

Are you with me yet?  Have you had enough yet?

Look, I know Donald Trump is an extreme example of what can go wrong with these things, but they are never informative.  Yes, that was particularly bad, but have you ever seen a good one?  No.  Never.  So let's just end these things and put us out of our misery.  Go away, Commission on Presidential Debates.  You are parasites.

For this morning, I want to focus on the petty and the theatrical rather than the substantive.  In other words, that which is emblematic of the debates themselves.  Interruptions.  Do you remember the 2016 debates?  Donald Trump got on stage, interrupted the hell out of Hillary Clinton, and the commentary that followed was that it was sexism.  Why?  Well, there is a common notion that if a man interrupts a woman, it is sexism.  Also, Donald Trump is really, really sexist.  (That latter part is kind of hard to dispute.)

Well.  Last night, Trump was on stage with Joe Biden.  Did he behave any differently?  No.  Why not?  Because he's Trump.  He's a two year old with a hammer.  To him, everything is a nail.  He never.  Shuts.  Up.  He never says anything true or valuable, which makes him the most infuriating human ever, but he never.  Shuts.  Up.  To the point that both Biden and Chis Wallace were going at him about it.

So this is a topic.  Trump interrupts.  If I could link back to The Unmutual Political Blog, I would link back to what I posted in 2016, which was social science analysis of interruption.  If you have a candidate who interrupts everyone, then it is not appropriate to say that candidate is sexist for interrupting a woman.  Instead, the candidate is just an asshole for never.  Shutting.  Up.

Interruptions happen.  Personally, I have the following trigger for interrupting.  When someone is just completely full of shit, speaking with unearned confidence on topics that I know well, that's what gets me to interrupt.  Man or woman, I'll interrupt.  Should I?  Probably not, but unearned confidence from bullshitters just really bugs me.

Then there are people who just interrupt everyone.  All the time.  Like Trump.

However, what we have seen in public dialog is something closer to a line that really bugged me in... sorry to pick on my favorite author's dud again, but N.K. Jemisin's The City We Became.  The most irritating "good" character in the book, Bronca (the avatar of the Bronx) basically just gives lectures on political correctness while treating everybody like dirt.  I really didn't like her.  At one point, while getting into an argument with a coworker who screwed her over, there's a line about how it's sexist to interrupt a woman.  In a conversation between two women.

Um... can we maybe think this through?  It doesn't matter who does the interrupting, and men apparently have no right to speak uninterrupted, it's just that women can't be interrupted.  If they are, regardless of who does the interrupting, it's sexist.  That's Bronca for you.  That, along with treating everyone around her like dirt and expecting them to kiss her ass.

Anyway, that concept of interruption played out, in the contrast between 2016 and 2020.  Trump interrupts Clinton, and it gets called sexist.  He interrupts Biden, and... we forget that he got called sexist for interrupting Clinton.

Occam's razor.  All other things being equal, the most parsimonious explanation tends to be the correct one.  Parsimony.  Parsimony here would be that Trump interrupts everyone because he's an asshole.  At all times.  To everyone.

Consider this, as the unifying explanation for all things Trump.  "Asshole."  How many empirical observations can you explain with that?  It doesn't mean he isn't racist, sexist, etc., but "asshole" explains so much!

So consider a "debate" when one participant is the Platonic ideal of "asshole."  I'll return to a metaphor I have made before.  Never try to play chess with a pigeon.  The pigeon will simply squawk, flap its wings, knock over the pieces, crap all over the board, and fly back to its friends to brag about how it won the greatest electoral college victory checkmate in history.  And when the outcome is actually decided by an audience of birdbrains, the pigeon really did win.  So never try to play chess with a pigeon.

Were you at all infuriated by Trump's behavior?  As I wrote yesterday, these things should be canceled.  For all time.  However, if you are sick of people doing what Trump did, there is actually a simple fix that nobody will ever have the courage to do.

Turn off a candidate's microphone when it isn't that candidate's turn to speak.

That way, any attempt to interrupt will just sound like a petty child whining in the background.

Are you paying attention, Commission?  Probably not.  And you wouldn't have the courage anyway.  Useless people.

How many more of these torturous things do we have?  Oy.  Oy vey.