The following video makes the point of the title of this article quite concisely; I've included a transcript underneath the video. <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjqoDNi2v_I" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/DjqoDNi2v_I" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="CNBC Television" caption="'You're just scum' — Haley blasts Ramaswamy over his attack on her daughter's TikTok"> If you don't want to watch the video, here's a faithful transcription of that train-wreck of human interaction and elocution. <bq quote-style="none"><img attachment="kayfabe.jpeg" align="right"><b>Ramaswamy:</b> I wanna laugh at why Nikki Haley didn't answer your question, which is about looking families in the eye. [sic] In the last debate, she made fun of me for actually joining TikTok. Well, her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time, so you might want to take care of your family first. [shots fired!] <b>Haley:</b> Leave my daughter out of your voice! [sic] <b>Ramaswamy: </b> ...before [grief-shaming?] your own daughter. The next generation of Americans are [sic] using it. And that's actually the point. <b>Crowd:</b> Booooooo... <b>Ramaswamy: </b> You have her supporters propping her up. That's fine. Here's the truth. <b>Haley:</b> [shaking head] <b>You're just scum.</b> <b>Ramaswamy: </b> The easy answer [wagging finger] is actually to say that we're just gonna ban one app. We have to go further. We have to ban any U.S. company actually transferring U.S. data to the Chinese. <b>Haley:</b> [continues to look sullen on second camera] </bq> Tell me this isn't perfect <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe" source="Wikipedia">kayfabe</a>. It's a bit hard for me to tell, but I think that Ramaswamy is playing the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heel_(professional_wrestling)" source="Wikipedia">heel</a> here. Listen to that crowd booing. You can almost see them standing and shaking their fists. This is an actual debate, featuring real-life, adult human-beings who are running for the office of the president of the United States, the center of the current global empire. This is a sad joke. If you don't agree, consider that your standards may have been steadily lowered by decades of awful, awful people in politics and media. I understand that people have a different way of expressing themselves when speaking than when writing. I'm aware that grammar rules for speech are, shall we say, <i>looser</i> than for text. Still, there are limits. I've included several [sics] where the way they are speaking indicates for me not only that they're not adhering to grammatical rules, but that they <i>simply aren't aware of them.</i> I accept this in most people around me---many of whom speak English as a foreign language---but I hold candidates for the office of the President of the United States to a higher standard. We used to have eloquent candidates. Now, we have candidates whose thoughts are not only muddled from the outset, but who cannot even express them in a manner that a third-grade teacher would consider to be correct. We're heading toward <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy#Cast" source="Wikipedia">Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho</a> from the movie <i>Idiocracy</i>. <ul> Ramaswamy doesn't know about plural/singular agreement (<iq>looking families in the eye[s]</iq> and <iq>next generation of Americans [is]...</iq>) Why would any candidate make fun of another for having joined one of the largest social-media networks in the world? What relevance does that have? Other than in the fantasy world where the dastardly Chinese are using it to spy on Americans? Haley doesn't even know basic idioms, e.g., <iq>leave my daughter out of your voice!</iq> No-one says it like this. <iq>Keep my daughter['s name] outta yer mouth!</iq> is more like it, but why would Nicky Haley know that? She's clearly trying to use a vernacular that she thinks will appeal, rather than one to which she's accustomed. That unintelligible bit from Ramaswamy is also unintelligible in the official transcript. He's mumbling so badly on-stage, during a debate, that no-one can understand him. </ul> 🤦‍♂️ In the other party, there's this awesome statement of batshittery. <bq>RFK, Jr., founder of the Children’s Health Defense [sic] Network: “Israel is a bulwark for us… it’s almost like having an aircraft carrier in the Middle East. <b>If Israel disappears, Russia, China, and BRICS+ countries will control 90% of the oil in the world and that would be cataclysmic for US national security.</b>”</bq> 🤦‍♂️ So many excellent choices. The U.S. enjoys a bountiful harvest of candidates.