There are a lot of words being used to describe the first debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.
Here’s a sampling of some of them you are seeing and hearing today.
Chaotic, bitter, raucous, tumultuous, nasty, angry, tense, brutal, embarrassing and painful to watch.
And one other word, too. Unprecedented. Of course you might say that. After all, it’s 2020, the year of the unprecedented.
So to have an unprecedented debate like that was probably not as surprising as it would be during a normal year.
But as we all have learned 2020 has been an abnormal year and the debate was the latest sign that it still is and that things could be a long way from becoming what we called normal.
Our lives have obviously not been normal and our politics clearly have not been normal.
And that’s why just a few hours after the presidential debate that will not soon be forgotten, some words about getting back to normal…that were uttered in a place thousands of miles away….are getting attention.
The words came not from a political leader but from a religious leader.
Pope Francis' words came during his weekly audience. The head of the Roman Catholic Church told thousands in front of him at the Vatican, most of them wearing face masks, that to come out of the pandemic, “We must find the cure not only for the coronavirus, but also for the great human and socio-economic viruses.” The Pope suggesting tenderness to others and saying that we not return to so-called “normality”.
I have to wonder if he watched that presidential debate.
(Photo Getty Images)