Roughly 112 years ago, in 1912, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg. Despite being designed to be unsinkable, the ship went down within three hours, and with it two thirds of its passengers and crew. It was one of the worst maritime disasters of its time.
What people may not realize is that one of the Titanic’s lookouts spotted the fateful iceberg in time for the ship to reverse its engines and turn sharply, turning a head-on collision into a grazing blow. The lookouts and crew thought this meant that disaster had been averted. However, this did catastrophic damage under the ship’s waterline, exposing no less than five of the ship’s ‘watertight’ compartments to water and ensuring the ship’s demise.
In addition, according to a senior architect involved in the ship's design during the inquiry into the sinking a few months later, the ship would have survived the blow had it hit head on. The link references a different steamer, the Arizona, striking an iceberg head on some 33 years earlier at full speed (due in part to not having enough lookouts) and being able to return to port, albeit with its bow buckled in. It is reasonable to conclude that the Titanic could very well have survived if the lookout had not spotted the iceberg in time for the ship to start turning.
I’d like to reiterate that the reason the Titanic sank was because the crew and captain had sufficient time to try to change course. It was natural for them to do so — nobody in their right mind would intentionally plow into an iceberg if they had any choice in the matter, and that’s what lookouts were there for. But the evidence seems clear that it would very possibly have been better for the ship and its passengers and crew had the lookout been less alert.
If you’re wondering, the reason I wrote this is due to someone else writing another article suggesting President Biden should drop out by very strongly implying (“Damn the icebergs, full steam ahead”) that by not changing course we risk the fate of the Titanic. One of my pet peeves is when someone misrepresents historical facts to support their argument.
So before anyone writes a comment to this effect, I’m not saying that because the Titanic wouldn’t have sunk if it had kept going, that the same holds true of Biden. Ships are not campaigns after all. In fact, I’ll say straight up that despite what I believe, I do not know what the best course of action actually would be. But there are some things I am pretty sure of.
- Biden does not suffer from cognitive dysfunction. I am not a neurologist, and my link is not a diagnosis. Rather, it is an article written by Sinai who by their own account has been diagnosed as suffering from cognitive dysfunction and is sharing what happened to them to show that if Biden was suffering from cognitive dysfunction, it would not be something that could be hidden by his staff or masked by using a teleprompter. Consider also how Trump looks and sounds, and how he can’t hide it no matter what he does. That’s what cognitive dysfunction looks like.
- Biden has fifty years of political experience. Given the first point, that his cognitive abilities are still intact, and my lack of political experience aside from a time or two of volunteering, I am for sure not willing to presume that I or, frankly, most people on this website are in any position to read the political room better than he is.
- Biden defeated Trump in 2020. I know better than to assume that winning once means that he is guaranteed to win again, but I didn’t think he was going to win in the first place (in fact, I supported Kamala Harris at first, and then Elizabeth Warren after she dropped out, only reluctantly supporting Biden once it was obvious he would be the nominee; sound familiar?). And one thing that has always stuck with me is my mom weeping when she thought he wasn’t going to make it to be nominated, because she thought he was the only person who could win. She did not live to see it, but she was right, and I have never forgotten it. So, call me sentimental, but I’m not going to bet against him again.
- Kamala Harris is the vice president. Meaning, if something happens later on and Biden can’t continue, she can take over then. And speaking personally, if we do have to change candidates, I would rather it happen closer to the election. There’s too much time for Republicans to screw with us if we try to do so now, not the least of which is that the Heritage Foundation (you know, the same group whose leader said he wants to run a bloodless revolution assuming the left, namely us, lets him?) is preparing to sue in several states to keep Biden on the ticket. Given what the supreme injustices have been doing lately, I think it is a safe bet that they would happily go along with that, and I’d rather not give them the pleasure given how badly it would hurt us. YMMV.
- Our strength comes from working our butts off. We are selling ourselves short if we think we can’t win with Biden at the top of the ticket. We won the midterms in 2018. We helped Biden beat Trump in 2020. We did exceptionally well in 2022, almost holding the House and gaining a seat in the Senate. So the idea that we cannot win because the general voting public has been misled by a malicious Republican smear campaign painting Biden as cognitively deficient since before he ever won in the first place is malarkey. It won’t be easy by any stretch of the imagination, I would be lying if I said I knew for sure he was going to win and you would all know it. I just want us to stop selling ourselves short with this negativity that he can’t and so we are doomed if he stays in. We are only doomed if we go in thinking we are and let it keep us from doing what we must to win.
So let’s get up and get out there to get out the vote. Time is slipping by and we never have enough of it.