Don't look away, America.
This is our work.
Opinion columnist
LZ Granderson
LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports and living life in the United States.
For four years, poll after poll suggested we didn’t want to see the showdown we saw in Thursday night’s presidential debate. And yet here we are, and now we can’t unsee it: Once again, our country’s choices for president are Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and they were every bit as bad as we knew they were going to be when we could have stopped it.
Why did these two pitiful candidates emerge from our primaries? Partly because of the political machinery. Partly because no Democrat seriously wanted to challenge the incumbent. And because there are no serious Republicans left.
Even before Thursday's debate, I felt a palpable nervousness in Washington this week as we all began to feel that the worst candidate (Trump) might prevail over the bad candidate (Biden). I was there when the White House opened its doors to the LGBTQ+ community to celebrate Pride month, and with this close election approaching, it was hard not to think that this might be the last Pride celebration at the White House for a while.
If you think I'm being overly dramatic, remember what's at stake.
Have you forgotten that one of the first things the Trump administration did on day one was get started? remove mentions of the LGBTQ+ community from government websites? Inside hoursOf course, as if erasing queer people was one of their main priorities.
So yes, many people who attended this week's ceremony were concerned about what a Trump victory would mean for our newly acquired marriages, our children's safety, our jobs and our housing.
That's what I was thinking about as I came to terms with the fact that America's choice for president is between a very old man with a decent heart and a crazy old man with an ax to grind.
For the vast majority of us, that amounts to choosing the lesser of two evils.
But it's not a matter of luck for those of us who remember that previous administrations persecuted gay federal government employees and kicked them out of their jobs (the “lavender scare” of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s), or that Republicans of the 80s and 90s left us to die in the streets during the AIDS crisis. There are no two evils to consider.
There is only survival.
The LGBTQ+ community feels this deeply, but this is what is at stake for everyone in this election.
Climate change is a topic of great importance to Generation Z, and yet it wasn't brought up until near the end of Thursday's debate. Why not? It is an economic issue: changes in climate affect the supply chainwhich drives inflation. It is a major national security issue:Climate crises fuel countless conflicts around the world and endanger the U.S. It's an immigration problem: Those conflicts, along with droughts, hunger and floods, fuel mass migrationswith more to come.
But we hear nothing remotely resembling a comprehensive plan to reverse pollution and global warming, or even to mitigate the effects that are now inevitable.
Biden did not put on an inspiring performance Thursday, had no great answers on the border and did little to calm his supporters' growing panic.
Meanwhile, Trump is a convicted felon who suggested that the Atlantic Ocean will protect us from wars in Europe, as if we didn't just recognize the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy. It wasn't the ocean that prevented World War II from being fought on our own shores: it was the 16 million Americans in the military who defeated the Axis powers before they invaded the US.
Thursday's debate focused primarily on image issues, and Biden didn't look good at all. There were hopes among his supporters that a fundraiser Friday in New York would be a victory lap of sorts. The high-profile event was aimed at energizing queer voters ahead of Pride weekend. However, after the debate, the feeling is one of panic.
The election of the president should be based on a question of politics. The historic campaign between a sitting president and a former president should focus on their backgrounds.
Unfortunately for many Americans, this election is simply going to be a matter of survival. Trump scored a point when he said Biden had referred to Black people as “superpredators,” criticizing the president for championing a notoriously racist crime bill in the 1990s. Biden himself has acknowledged the harms of the bill. law on numerous occasions and, as president, has been working to make things right.
For some, that's not enough, and I understand that. I would also never forget the grave injustices that have sent generations of black people to prison unnecessarily and ruined so many lives.
But let's also look at the other side of the stage. I can't forget that in 1989, Trump called for the death penalty for the five black and Latino boys who had been falsely accused of attacking a white jogger in Central Park. Even after DNA testing exonerated the five and the city awarded them $41 million for their wrongful convictions and imprisonment, Trump – by then the president – continued to say they were guilty.
That kind of racist thinking and rhetoric is not distant history. Let's think about what happened just three years ago, in the January 6 insurrection. Asked Thursday about the convicted criminals who attacked the Capitol, Trump repeatedly characterized them as victims of sorts. They scaled walls, broke windows and attacked Capitol Police as members of Congress ran for their lives. If black people had tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power, Trump would not have called them patriots.
So yes, survival was on my mind as I watched Biden and Trump frantically flip from one topic to another on the debate stage, at one point bragging about their golf games as if the absence of an audience made them forget that America was watching.
But we did, sometimes with horror. It has become painfully clear that in just 16 years, the best country on Earth went from “yes we can” to “what the hell happened to us?”
