The Debate We Needed To See

      First of all, I admit the error in my previous post of my prediction that Thursday night's Presidential debate would amount to little more than a glorified game of Gotcha.
       I was very wrong. Painful as it was to watch, this turned out to be a debate of great import and one that we needed to see. We needed to see Joe Biden as he was, looking every day and then some of his 81 years, shuffling,  stiff, frail, elderly. We needed to see him standing at the podium, staring off in the distance with an empty, slack-jawed expression. We needed to hear him stumbling, at times incoherent, often unable to make a clear and effective point,  barely able to raise his voice above a raspy whisper.
         We needed to hear Donald Trump evade question after question that was put to him, instead veering off into a fantastical verbal stratosphere,  spewing out the most brazen, ridiculous, fly-in-the-face-of-reality lies, fabrications, misinformation and nonsense: That Nancy Pelosi was responsible for the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol; that Democrats would allow abortion up to the moment of birth and the killing of babies after they're born;  that Biden indicted him, Trump, because he was Biden's political opponent; that Biden encouraged Russia to attack Ukraine; that Biden is being paid by China. And these are only the tip of Trump's iceberg of blatant falsehoods and fantasies during the debate. 
        Seeing this alarming face-off between, as CNN commentator Van Jones put it, "an old man and a con man," one or the other of whom is slated to be the next leader of our country, was a heavy hit of reality.
          It rocked my world.  Alas, I'm afraid my world needed to be rocked.