Trump vs Biden

[Anomalocaris]

It depresses me that this is even close.

Indeed.

I am 61 now and I've lived my whole life as an optimist. I've always made an assumption of a basic goodness of the human species. If we see one of us kicking a puppy, we revile that individual, right? We rise up as a majority and set a standard that that kind of thing is unacceptable. That standard is passed down to the next generation and we improve as a species.

But now it seems we have taken multiple steps back.

Trump is amoral, shallow, ignorant and cruel. How can any decent human being look upon him and not recoil in revulsion? This is before we even address his competency to lead a nation. Yet 48% of Americans voted for this human shit stain. What does that say about us as a culture?

VERY depressing.

I always found it intrinsically inconsistent to suppose the human species can possibly be basically good.      Good is by implicit definition a state better than what is par for the course,    What human species actually is, is by definition what is par for the course.   How can what is par for the course be expected to be better than par for the course?

I think the reason why we seem to regress is we seem to delude ourselves into believing the whole average will get better if only we pretend the portion that is dragging down the average would discover their own inner above-averageness if we credit them with above-averageness.