For many voters, image seems more important than substance.
Large-scale human disasters are natural phenomena like hurricanes and forest fires. They differ only in being results of decisions made in our individual brains and communicated to other people through language and pictures. They are group behaviors that are out of our individual control.
We humans are already in slow-moving disasters of climate change and wars resulting from many faulty human decisions. And the United States is in a heated social conflict over its selection of political leadership that threatens to erupt into violence. Many of us feel a sense of inevitability to it all, and as we have just seen, any individual with a gun can act as a catalyst, creating a spark that ignites a social fire.
As things stand now, and given the fact that many voters decide on images rather than detailed ideas, a bloodied but defiant-looking Trump seems likely to defeat a frail-looking Biden. No matter that Trump is a crook, narcissist and perpetual liar who promises dictatorial and magically quick solutions to complex problems and long-lasting subversion of American democracy, while Biden is a decent person…
