Choice: Old or evil?

My background is in psychology, so I try to understand complicated events in terms of human behavior. Why’d they/we do that? From time to time, however, events are beyond me.

We are in one of those situations now where Donald Trump leads for the Republican presidential nomination, and more or less half the electorate apparently would prefer him over Joe Biden. The notion that anyone thinks Donald Trump is fit to be president is out of my range of comprehension.

His presidency was not as much of a disaster as I had feared. He did push a major tax cut for the rich and big business that added about $8 trillion to the debt, and he did build a bunch of the stupid border wall, but Democrats kept him from succeeding in his worst efforts, like killing the ACA (Obamacare). Refusal to accept electoral defeat and raising an attempted insurrection against the transfer of power, of course, goes beyond anything we have ever seen.

Still, we survived.

It is not clear that American democracy will survive a second Trump presidency given the claims he is making about ignoring elections, filling positions with his loyalists, and prosecuting his political opponents.

My wonderment at his level of support, however, is more about my perception of the person than about particular actions. I see him as unattractive, possibly autistic, with no empathy, no sense of humor, and no objective sense of truth. He appears to equate the national interest with his personal whims, and I doubt he can do any better.

Biden has not done us any favors by not announcing his retirement months ago, but I hope between now and the election more people will come to the conclusion that too old is better than evil.

ROGER A. WEBB Little Rock