Pardon for the delay in replying to your question, I was tending to dinner and family matters.
> So please explain why you're giving Trump (or why you would give ANYONE) a pass on
Another pitfall/risk I see in the world is the mismatch between meaning and language, combined with not just widespread unawareness of this phenomenon, but refusal to even consider ideas of this nature.
For example, "giving Trump a pass for..."
I did a quick google to see what came back, and by chance, the first hit was this:
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/425274/what-does...
That's a pretty apt example of one of the pitfalls I mentioned in my long rant. Everyone is free to deny whatever parts of reality they choose, but when a movie is making jokes about a phenomenon and people still deny it exists....well, I'm not sure what to say. "It's unfortunate" will have to do for now.
But I digress.
I will choose an interpretation: "Why do you continue to pledge your vote to a person who....<does many nasty things>"?
To me, the answer is very simple, and I proclaim that I behave no differently than anyone else. I prefer a certain path for the world (well, an infinite number are acceptable to me, but let's try to keep it simple), based on an extremely complex analysis of thousands of variables (much of which takes place in my subconscious, which passes data up to the conscious mind in various forms), and when an election is approaching, I compare my goals against all available candidates (their platform, my intuition of the likelihood they are actually telling the truth, etc) and the end result is a chosen candidate, accompanied by various other metrics such as "% consistency with your goals", "how pleased I am with this decision", etc
I would have preferred Tulsi Gabbard or Bernie Sanders to be pitted against Trump (either of them could have won handily), but Tulsi was taken care of, and Bernie will soon suffer the same fate. Joe Biden will win the DNC nomination. The "will of the voters" is to pit Joe Biden against Donald Trump. Joe Biden is the single most preferred person. This what is qualifies as a "fact" in early 21st century America. Or so we are told (which seems to have become the de facto definition of a fact, at least according to popular opinion).
So for the Trump vs Biden election, my algorithm outputs Donald Trump as my choice, with a "how pleased I am with this decision" factor somewhere in the neighborhood of zero.
I suspect your algorithm consists of both variables and implementation that are different than mine, so will produce a different output. This has always been the case, and always will be. It's not pretty, but until others are willing to get their egos (in the Buddhist sense of the word) under control and start working together to change the obviously broken political system, I think this is what we're stuck with.
Prior to the covid-19 event, my prediction was that Trump would utterly crush Biden. Covid-19 changes the game significantly, but Donald's base is extremely strong, and constantly bolstered by self-destructive behavior of the media and individuals. I think there can be great utility in examining situations through various metaphorical lenses. In this example, I kind of envision Trump's base as a monster, or a machine. Hate, insults, attacks, normally we would expect to invoke shame in a person. But not all situations are the same, and if you choose to deal with anomalies in a normal way, it can sometimes produce unexpected negative results. The last election was one example of this phenomenon, and from where I sit all signs are that the exact same strategy that failed last time is being tried again. Time will tell if it works, but I'm not optimistic.
> Do you imagine that Biden has any of those character flaws at anywhere near Trump's magnitide?
No, not even close, but I don't weight such things very heavily when it comes to politics.
> Or does Biden have some other super-horrible character flaw that outweighs all of Trump's (like using tabs instead of spaces)?
I see Biden as a standard globalist, and when I see globalism, I see risk (ex: covid-19).
I lean conservative. Risk, stability, security, these sorts of silly (to some) notions are not just high priorities, but pre-requisistes. Now, this isn't to say I don't see Trump as risky, the truth of the matter is quite the opposite. But to me, he's a known risk, plus a side order of randomness that you get with any political candidate. I personally assess the risks to be much higher with Joe Biden, so my vote goes to Trump.
As an aside, while "like using tabs instead of spaces" is funny, I tend to lack a sense of humor when it comes to certain topics. Take this global pandemic. To me, this is an extremely big deal. As serious as a heart attack. I'm all for fun and games, but there's a time to be serious too. And that's probably something else that is very different between you and me: our personal interpretation, or implementation of "serious". When I say serious, I am not joking around. At all. My interpretation of the magnitude of your seriousness is that you still seem to think this is some kind of a game to be won. We are literally in a global pandemic, and still the discourse consists of name calling, dishonest framing of "facts", refusal to let guards down and truly communicate. I get this weird vibe where it kind of seems like people think we should take this situation really, really seriously", but if a person does* take it really, really seriously, and maybe starts asking questions about whether some of the fundamental ways we run our societies should maybe be reviewed, the mood kinda changes to something more along the lines of "whoa there buddy, let's not get too excited now....it's a very big deal, but let's not lose our heads and start thinking too much. Casual thinking is what got us this far, and if it ain't broke, why fix it?" Actually, I have to confess I'm over-dramatizing it a bit. Usually you'll just get a downvote and silence. When you encounter kinds of thinking that are so obviously wrong, they don't even deserve a response.
To me, this event was literally an existential threat (not to mankind entirely, but to our high-tech industrialized world), and it's time to get serious for a change. But all I see anywhere I look (and yes, this applies to "my team" too), is cultural immaturity. Children playing recklessly with incredibly powerful toys, with not the slightest concern for whether they possess the wisdom to wield them responsibly.
To me, this situation is unforgivable. Over and over we were told that any concerns about globalization, offshoring of manufacturing, etc were foolish, old-fashioned, ignorant, uninformed, "not with the times", actually not genuine concerns but just made up excuses motivated by a "fear of brown people".
It seems that when members of your team assess me, they see racism, unintelligence, etc. I know this because I have been called all these names many times. Not for anything I've said, but because I identity as a conservative and as a Trump supporter, and I do not hide it. But that's fine. It's a free country, everyone is entitled to their opinion. But let's not forget the advice your "side" so often likes to scold mine with: "You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts." Clever sounding platitudes like this are incredibly effective rhetoric, but they also have the downside working in both directions.
I doubt you have any clue what I see when I look at your "side", mainly because I suspect you're not interested in the slightest. But I'll tell you anyways because I don't sense any sign of good will on your behalf, and I get a nice, confident "keeping it real" vibe from you. I like this personality type, so we may be brothers in that regard at least.
When I look at "your team", here are some of the things I see: hypocrisy, deceit, foolishness, arrogance, recklessness, lust for power and money, authoritarianism, utter lack of humility (the very notion seems to now be considered quaint), delusion, wilful ignorance, the list goes on. How accurate is my "sight"? How might one know such things? (Note: to be clear, this is a generalized list of attributes that can be commonly found within the group - any randomly selected person from that group should not be expected to share all or even any of these attributes. And of course, these are my personal opinions and should not be accepted blindly as fact. A responsible adult should always confirm any claims before accepting them as true.)
But what I do know is that when I look at the window, I don't see any cars or people on the street, and when I turn on the TV, I hear stories of hundreds of people dying, in most unpleasant ways. And for what? What is it that we pursue that makes us behave this way? I think that's a pretty interesting question, and well worth some serious consideration.
Of course, "my team" shares most of the negative attributes I listed as well, and is typically a far worse offender. But I'd also say that they do a much better job of "owning" them. Trump supporters know he lies all the time, it almost seems like a source of pride for them. As far as I can tell (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), you guys generally seem to think your leaders are telling the truth.
I do not trust the judgement of anyone who believes that the political systems of the United States and most of the Western world are not mostly fraudulent, and in collusion with corporations and the media for the benefit of the rich and powerful. If you watch the theater that is the "debates", and 3 minute long "in-depth, hard hitting" interviews of candidates by "journalists" throwing them softball questions, and believe that this is a legitimate system, populated by politicians whose actions match their words, I am afraid we will have to respectfully disagree.
But as always: I may be right, I may be wrong. The answers to such questions are not knowable, regardless of one's opinion.