Are There Any Real Issues in the 2024 Campaign?

I have been following Presidential politics since the 1960 contest between Richard Nixon and JFK, and I have never found a Presidential election campaign to be as devoid of real issues as this year’s campaign. And I’m beginning to wonder whether it will make any real difference to our lives and the overall circumstances of American society regardless of who wins.

Back in 1960 and until the end of Reagan’s second term, the United States was a combatant in something known as the Cold War, which sometimes also became a hot war, viz., Korea and Viet Nam. Internationally, we also faced two powerful adversaries — the Soviets and the Chinese — who derived their basic strategic stances from an ideology which fundamentally rejected the ideological perspectives espoused by the United States.

We also had plenty of domestic issues which divided the two parties — civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, transgender, and every other gender right. In their 2024 campaign platform the GOP includes in their ‘forward-looking’ agenda their 17th goal as: “Keep men out of women’s sports.”

Actually, I don’t blame Trump and his Republic(an) toadies from creating a campaign narrative out of such horseshit when no single American soldier is in harms’ way, when the Dow is above 42,000, the unemployment rate is stuck at 4% and yesterday I…