Over the past two weeks, the competing visions of President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have been laid out _ starkly _ and the narrow slice of undecided voters will have to settle on what kind of country they want.
Do they want an America that strives toward racial justice and equality, that values its place in the community of nations, that will work to reverse the catastrophic effects of climate change?
Or do they want four more years of chaos?
Trump's performance over the past three-and-a-half years has made it clear that his greatest passion is himself, which means he is loyal only to those who are loyal to him, a group that includes his white base and selected international despots. His tax cuts have benefited the very richest, his wall on the southern border remains unfinished, an entirely foreseeable pandemic caught him unawares, the economy has tanked, millions of Americans are unemployed and schools, most of them anyway, are shuttered.
He does not even pretend to be the president of all of us, and his best argument against Biden is downright nonsensical. (I want to say "craven," but I am in danger of overusing that word when I write about Trump.)
If Biden is elected, Trump predicts, the country will explode with the kind of racial unrest and protests against police brutality that we saw this summer after a white police officer choked the life out of a Black man, George Floyd.
It's a neat and cynical trick: Vote for me because what's happening on my watch is unacceptable.
Cities run by Democratic mayors and states run by Democratic governors are not going to magically turn into Republican strongholds if Trump is reelected. If they were, they would have done so by now. If Trump is returned to office, expect more of what we've seen this summer, not less.
What Trump is promising is four more years of what is already devastating our country: a pandemic he tried to wish away that has killed more than 180,000 Americans and counting; violent reactions to police brutality and the systemic racism that allows an unarmed Black father to be shot seven times in the back while a white teenager who is alleged to have murdered two people with an AR-style rifle walks calmly past police, who ignore him.
In a shocking but predictable turn of events, Trump's acolytes on the right have defended the white teenage shooter.
"How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?" asked Tucker Carlson on his Fox News show.
"I want him as my president," tweeted Ann Coulter.
As Biden told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Thursday, "This happens to be Donald Trump's America."
