It’s very hard to think of anyone who wanted a Trump-Biden rematch. Except perhaps Trump and Biden, which only makes it worse. So is American democracy broken?

First, a word of consolation. Both men are unfit for office.

No, wait. Sorry. I meant to offer the solace that it’s not the first time US presidential politics appeared to justify an agonized cry of despair -- and somehow self-government did not perish from the earth. For instance the Nixon-McGovern contest in 1972, with one candidate unfit for office due to character flaws and the other due to zany ideology. Or the astoundingly vitriolic 1800 election between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both now widely regarded as paragons of statesmanship, though I deny it on Jefferson.

It may even be some comfort to reflect that it’s not just the occasional campaign with people chanting “Rumsey Dumsey, Rumsey Dumsey, Col. Johnson killed Tecumseh” or “Ma, ma, where’s my pa? Off to the White House ha ha ha”. Henry Adams complained in 1918 that “The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.” Whereas nowadays we’d give quite a bit for a Grant-Seymour rematch.

Or Cleveland-Blaine (1884), not least because many Republicans disgusted by Blaine’s corruption openly backed Cleveland. Yet somehow the United States has caromed from crisis to crisis with politicians who had to be seen to be disbelieved and thus far done remarkably well.

Thus far.

But surely this time we’re really in trouble. And by we I mean them but also the rest of us, because Abraham Lincoln (who also attracted widespread disgust from contemporaries) rightly called the United States “the last best hope of earth” in his December 1, 1862 Annual Message to Congress, shortly before signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Mercator readers can think of a better hope, but when you’re checking your watch and wondering where the Apocalypse has gotten to, you know things are grim.

There’s my cry of despair. To the horror of many of my right-wing friends, I have always regarded Trump as a loathsome character, frivolous, nasty, narcissistic and pig-ignorant. And the more I see of him, the less I like him, which took some doing. But Biden, whose politics and mendacity always infuriated me, is now also manifestly senile. I suspect once the wraps are off, many within the Administration will concede that he was already unable to discharge the duties of his office when he first assumed them.

When the wraps are off. But there’s the rub. They know it, but won’t say it lest it mar their partisan fortunes. And yes, I understand that a great many people are so determined to prevent Trump from returning to the White House that they refuse to acknowledge, even to themselves, Biden’s overwhelming shortcomings… and vice versa. The problem is, how did we get here and how do we leave? How did these two mediocrities do it to us?

The obvious answer is, they didn’t. The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves. The vicious tribalism of politics has produced this rematch, not the other way around. And there’s no way I’m letting the Left off the hook.

As noted, politics has always been nasty. Even in ancient Rome. But in more recent years, it is fair to call Democrats and liberals rallying around Bill Clinton, as a champion of women’s rights no less, poisoning the well. Like the extraordinary elite collusion over Hunter Biden’s laptop, incriminating not just to the hapless son but to his crooked father. Nobody who hushes that business up can fairly complain that Trump is dishonest.

He is, of course. If he even knows enough of the truth to concoct a lie. Mostly Trump lives in a world of his own invention, shunning anyone who might try to tell him 2+2 was 4 if he said it was 5 with that hideous leer of self-satisfied mischief. But so do those people who spread the idea that Trump was a Russian Manchurian candidate in 2016.

I could go on and on, shedding readers with every syllable. I accumulated about 60 relevant news items while drafting this piece and I know you wish I’d worked them all in. Instead I’m going to appeal to anyone who’s still with me to concede that both camps are guilty not just of deceit but of wilful, provocative contempt for truth on a scale that threatens American democracy if not Western civilization itself.

Which isn’t good. Except maybe it is. Because we’re looking for a solution here and surely that problem isn’t as hard as travelling faster than light. Since it’s us, we just have to stop being a byword and a hissing to the nations.

Except if it were that simple, it wouldn’t need me to point it out. There’s a reason people have gotten so dug in. And on the Trump side, an important clue is that meme of his picture and words “IN REALITY THEY’RE NOT AFTER ME THEY’RE AFTER YOU I’M JUST IN THE WAY”.

A great many people feel ill-used by the modern economic and social structure that so clearly favours those clever at manipulating symbols, who designed it, over those good at handling things, who cannot cope with it. It’s not just that the average Joe and Jane can’t navigate modern bureaucracy, lobbying or DEI labyrinths. It’s that they know a woman can’t have a penis and doubt that driving a car causes bad weather, but if they try to speak up, they’re humiliated and possibly ruined. It’s not fair, and at a certain point it creates a kind of “I’ll show you” counter-contempt for decency.

As for the anti-Trump side, I shouldn’t have to rattle off all the egregious things he’s said and done, including spending his presidency watching TV, tweeting and nursing resentments. Nor would it help, because I’m calling Trump a symptom not a cause and the previous paragraph didn’t mention Biden once. But it’s harder for me to be fair to the Left on the long-term grievances because I think they’re more sinners than sinned against.

If you think of the worst things that happened under, say, George Bush Jr, other than the imperial ventures Trump hates and Biden grudgingly defends, most are imaginary. The idea that America has seen a massive resurgence of racism or unbridled poor-trampling free enterprise strikes me as silly.

Indeed my problem with mainstream Republicans is like that of Trump supporters -- that they’re not really conservative. But it’s also my problem with Trump. Even his contempt for truth is right out of the deconstructionist, moral-relativist playbook of the Left, a betrayal of conservatism not an expression of its inner demons. And speaking of morals, last time the GOP had a president manifestly unfit for office, Nixon, they turned on him over Watergate.