Out on our ice floes

There was no denying it; President Biden’s debate performance was less than ideal. He looked haggard and sounded flustered. His age was on full display.

His voice lacked the forceful clarity of his opponent, who, evidently, had unhinged his mouth and rambled off a whitewater-rapids’ force stream of lies capable of capsizing rational thought.

Faced with Trump’s tirade of

untruths, Biden came across as a boat adrift. This is understandable, but also frightening to those of us who remain “popular” voters worried about clean air, potable water, equality, and the ability to access any level of justice now that the Supreme Court has ruled our president is officially above the law.

The faces in the room with me that evening registered a gamut of reactions from confusion to horror. I nodded in what I thought was commiseration. 

I thought we understood the assignment. The threats we face as a nation are coming from within our own borders and perpetrated by people who call themselves patriots. People who want to see the chaos that ensues as they strip away basic human rights one by one. 

In recent years, a Supreme Court built by minority gamesmanship has wrested an unimaginable amount of power from the people and taken it for itself. This week it proved its supreme illegitimacy by officially rendering itself unto a Caesar.

Yet as the understanding that nothing we want for our children or our children’s children will survive a nation that splinters into hateful factions, we propose instead to sink the ship that is keeping us afloat. 

But I did not see equal rivals. 

I saw a good man with trouble extracting words become speechless after his opponent built a wall of lies out of thin air. 

And when it was over, I wasn’t prepared for the family to erupt into a figurative fistfight: a virtual blow-by-blow, slamming the only candidate standing between a convicted felon and the democracy he is hellbent on destroying. 

A man who, we all seem to discount, is currently employed in that exact role, and has enlisted a deep bench of qualified cabinet and staff members to serve in his administration: People who will be accountable to the nation rather than loyal to sycophants and grifters. 

It pains me to listen as the people I love turn on a good man who has dedicated his entire career to public service, for so little while a lying scoundrel remains protected and able to continue his deceit and treachery, turning the office of the presidency into a dangerous dictatorship.

We have to make some hard choices including reeling back power that has gone unchecked. But choosing Biden and the norms he represents shouldn’t be one of them. Standing up to authoritarians is the job at hand if we are to retrieve any of the ideals we set forth for ourselves as a nation. 

The cost of kindness certainly has risen in this new economy, but the cost of not standing together in this moment will morally bankrupt us all if it hasn’t already.