Two steins of Kiitos beer weren't quite enough to swallow the brutal CNN debate between Biden and Trump. 

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I'm not much of a beer drinker. I didn't start imbibing alcohol of any kind until my late 20s and without the keg-fueled college years of a more typical post-adolescence, I found myself largely leapfrogging the brewed arts in favor of a good mezcal, gin or, especially, bourbon.

But there are routine occasions when I make a point to drink local beers: I always take a few cans with me on the 999 ride; it typically takes me two pints-worth of time at Cheers to You to finish the City Weekly crossword puzzle; and I always get a pint with my burger at Brewvies, especially since they have Kiitos Coffee Cream Ale on tap—my favorite.

But last week, after locking up my ebike and heading into Brewvies for the CNN debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, I did what I almost never do and ordered a stein. And after the first ad break, I ordered another.

Brewvies was the perfect host to watch the debate. There was some initial discomfort caused by local media who decided to cover the screening by shining bright lights in the audience's faces. But they graciously tilted their gear upward after I asked them to.

The auditorium was roughly two-thirds full, largely millennial and overwhelmingly pro-Biden or, at minimum, anti-Trump. I'll admit to being a little nervous going in—the prospect of spending 90 minutes surrounded by local MAGA Proud Boys weighed on me—but once again my fellow Salt Lakers were a source of familial comfort, as if we had all gathered in the living room, drinks and snacks at the ready, to watch TV together.

I started the evening worried that I was walking into a fight. I ended the evening feeling like I had participated in a twisted form of group therapy.

There's no ands, ifs or buts about it: Biden sucked. And while there's no question he's being held to an unfair double-standard next to a malignant narcissist and adjudicated criminal who has no business being treated like a legitimate candidate, there's also no denying that Joseph Robinette Biden is an elderly man past his prime who failed to assuage the doubts about his ability to win this election.

You could feel the dread building in the room, as nervous chuckling gave way to full-bellied gallows humor. There were cheers when the moderators reiterated to Trump that he had failed, over and over again, to answer their questions. And there were gasps and groans as Biden failed, over and over again, to land obvious and necessary blows against the most eminently punchable and fallacious man on Earth. When I ducked out for my second stein, I passed a woman who was holding her friend and attempting to reassure them by saying "It'll be OK. It'll be Ok."

Will it? Please, someone tell me, will it be OK?

Donald Trump is unrepentant about the damage he caused to this country, most viscerally with the horrific events surrounding January 6 (my birthday, for an added treat) and the subversion of the 2020 election, but also extending through two bipartisan impeachments, the emboldening of white supremacists, an inept response to a global pandemic that killed millions, the brain drain and delegitimization of federal agencies and his sole legislative achievement: an ill-conceived package of tax cuts that benefited the ultra wealthy while blowing a hole in the nation's economic solvency.

But perhaps the most insidious aspect of Trump's continued presence in our lives is the way he's warped the Republican Party into a demented farce powered by grievance and delusion. We Americans are trapped in a two-party paradigm and it matters when one of those parties (the party I was raised in) can no longer be trusted to uphold the fundamental tenets of liberal democracy.

More than 45% of Utah Republicans were willing to hand the governor's mansion to Phil Lyman who, like Trump, rejects any facts that don't suit him. And Sen. Mike "Based" Lee appears able to retain office for as long as he'd like despite being a useless and insufferable hack, to put it nicely.

The feeling of powerlessness, watching the country careen toward obvious calamity, is suffocating. Democrats seemingly have no answer—and certainly no easy answer—to this problem, while my fellow Republicans appear content to close their eyes, plug their ears and assume they'll come out alright on the other end. Mitt Romney calls a spade a spade and is being shown the door; state Auditor John Dougall stood for competence and decency and got walloped in the primary.

I take what little comfort I can from knowing that a vote for a presidential candidate is also a vote for the cabinet and broader administration that the president will organize. Earlier in the same day as the CNN debate, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg performed wonderfully in a Capitol hearing on electric vehicle subsidies, slicing and dicing the bad-faith arguments of MAGA morons. The nation's woefully dilapidated infrastructure is finally seeing investment after decades of false promises and under Biden, the United States has seen its longest sustained period of below-4% unemployment since Vietnam. Funny how all the Republicans running on "the economy" never seem to mention that little tidbit.

A vote for Trump is a vote to bring the circus back to town, and to reward the misdeeds of a deeply troubled man. A vote for Biden is a vote for a man who—let's be honest—might very well die in office, but who will at least put intelligent people in place to keep the wheels from falling off.

It's a brutal choice that Americans never should have been presented with. Here's hoping a third stein helps it go down smoother.