I, like many others, watched the first presidential debate and didn’t know what to think about it afterwards. Watching the debate made me feel as if my lifespan just decreased with every passing second. It was the worst debate I have ever seen.

While this debate was the most infuriating, tiring viewing experiences one could have, the sheer amount of people who acted as if this came out of nowhere is infuriating in its own right. 

One thing that always surprises me when it comes to moderate liberals or centrists is that while they can acknowledge the harm done by the president or the childish demeanor of incompetence he has, they still feel the need to act like everytime he blunders yet again, that it is out of character. 

The sheer amount of times I hear “I can’t believe Trump did that” from the same people after each failure of his gets tiring. Trump has been a hazard to Americans his entire presidency, so what surprises you about him doing the wrong thing once again?

During the debate Trump kept interrupting, fighting with the moderator, spewing lie after lie, refusing to be for a fair election and against white supremacy and even attacking Biden’s son for his struggles with cocaine while Biden was talking about his other son who served in war and died of a Brain tumor. Biden held back except for telling the president to shut up after growing tired of countless lies and interruptions.

When discussing the debate with others I was confused by how many people said both candidates were rude. The more shocking part is most people I heard criticizing both were liberal, while conservatives still held onto the delusion that Trump had a performance that was even close to above average. 

While Biden and the Democratic Party have been purposefully working to appeal to centrists, they have failed for letting Republicans control the narrative. 

While both parties were considered to hold some standard of partisan ideals until 2016, Trump ushered in a new era for the GOP where the aggression and fear mongering they reserved for dirty tactics in election years became the sole identity of the party. In response to the new, more malicious GOP, liberals chose to bow down while pretending to oppose Trump. 

While news anchors for MSNBC and CNN are often referred to as “leftist news outlets”by the hive of scum and villainy that is the GOP, their coverage of the president is never on his fascist leaning policies, but on how rude his tweets are. Conservatives forced their rhetoric that any criticism of the GOP makes you left-wing and we accepted it.

When it comes to policy, the republicans managed to make policies offered by most successful countries such as free healthcare and free college into something the public should see as scary and radical. Instead of fighting back against this rhetoric the Democratic Party chose to throw those ideas under the bus and move the spectrum to a point where the far and even center right engages in Apologism for White Supremacy and the supposed “far left” presidential candidates are coming out in support of fracking.

This country has moved to a point where the right wing committing hate crimes is viewed as just as radical as disagreeing with those hate crimes. We are to a point where half the country believes the president when he claims his republican-lite opponent is a radical leftist. 

Left wingers have to convince liberals to stand up and fight their aggressors, instead of sending them to harass us. Because as the Trump Presidency and his debate performance have shown, the right wing will try to demolish everyone who doesn’t fall exactly in line, no matter how much you compromise.