As much as I don’t want to talk politics, we have less than a week till voters make their wishes known on what America they want, and it seems necessary. I made my choices Saturday, not that some of them will make much of a difference because of the way our system is set up (not just most states’ winner-take-all stance on the Electoral College, but gerrymandering within states that often protects incumbents who need to go).

I was talking with a friend Sunday who is just as frustrated as I am that so many campaigns keep using different standards and arguments that sound more like projection than real reasons to vote for them. Heck, Donald Trump has been using Joe Biden’s age and cognitive decline against him (when Trump is only a little younger) all along, and now he’s using the same arguments (minus the age) against Kamala Harris.

Apparently Trump thinks that “the weave” of incomprehensible garble, the many odd things he spouts at rallies and on Truth Social, and his 39 minutes of “dancing” at a town hall rather than answering questions is evidence that he’s a competent person.

At this point, I’m not sure I’d even classify him as a person; he seems more a conglomeration of hatred and grudges in an orange-colored person-sized bag.

Harris’ campaign has actually started turning Trump’s insults back on him. Maeve Reston and Ashley Parker wrote in The Washington Post Sunday that Harris said, “When he does answer a question or speak at a rally, have you noticed he tends to go off-script and ramble? And generally, for the life of him, cannot finish a thought … He has called it the ‘weave.’ But I think we here would call it nonsense.”

Wrote Reston and Parker: “But Harris is portraying Trump not only as old, but also as unstable, unhinged and intent on amassing ‘unchecked power’—a figure whose thirst for control would endanger both democracy and the safety of the American people.”

Harris is not wrong, and many people have commented on both the odd behavior and the different standards the two candidates are being held to. Of course, her saying that opened her up to more attacks (how dare anyone stand up against an attack on them, especially if that person is a woman!).

“For Harris,” Reston and Parker wrote, “there is the added benefit of deliberately trolling Trump and getting under his skin, in part because he often takes the bait. The former president defined the terms of the presidential contest, making it a referendum on age and fitness for office, and now the Harris team is just playing on his turf, [a] Harris aide said.

“Dan Pfeiffer, a former Barack Obama adviser, noted that the attacks are also a way for Harris to undercut Americans’ perceptions of Trump’s strength.”

“Trump has made himself vulnerable to this, not just by being old, but by hiding from the press and acting in a way where you’d have a family meeting if your uncle said some of those things,” Pfeiffer told the reporters. “It’s enjoyable to watch him hoisted on his own petard, but this is also [about how] politics in every race comes down to strength in some way, shape or form.”

Politics has long been full of dirty tricks, slander and other bad behavior. However, in at least a good part of the last century, members of Congress, the president and other elected officials throughout the country were able to put politics aside to work for the best possible solutions for the people they served (need I bring up John Paul Hammerschmidt, Dale Bumpers and company again?). Compromise wasn’t the dirty word it is now. Campaigns were more cordial, for the most part (so much so that it made news when dirty tricks were played), and those who lost their races conceded gracefully. Actual policy was debated, rather than debates being primarily hyperbole, misinformation and name-calling.

I really should have said “debates.” They’re nothing like actual debates.

We could get back to a more congenial way of doing things if we really wanted to, but I fear that too many people are invested in the division dirty politics feeds to stop now. For one thing, it makes it a lot easier to sort through the people who might believe your tripe.

Another friend noted last week Van Jones’ analysis after a town-hall meeting with Anderson Cooper on CNN (which Trump dropped out of): “He gets to be lawless, she has to be flawless. That’s what’s unfair. … They’re not taking the same exam. Look, she has policies, she may not articulate them perfectly every time … but she’s fighting for actual ideas that will help real people and he’s talking about people’s [genitalia].”

Women are used to the double standard; we’ve dealt with it our entire lives. Being passed over for men with fewer qualifications for jobs is familiar to many of us (one right out of grad school comes to mind for me, especially since the scripts I submitted as part of the process were used for station promos rather than those written by the chosen candidate).

We’re also far too acquainted with being patronized when we dare to speak up in meetings (or in columns on news websites) on topics in our areas of expertise, being talked over, or outright ignored.

Yeah, many of us are ticked off since we had to fight for what men were given as a matter of course: the vote, financial independence, property rights and so much more. Can you really blame us? Well, I guess if you think women, like children, should be seen and not heard and they should just accept their lots in life, you might, but you’d be spitting on the legacies of many brilliant and brave women who dared to believe they were worthy of more than society deemed.

Where would we be without women like Marie Curie, who not only invented a new area of science, but was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, first female professor at the University of Paris, and the first person to win a second Nobel? Or how about Ada Lovelace, a mathematician considered to be the first computer programmer, or Florence Nightingale, who was instrumental in establishing a military nursing service and improving medical services? There are many more, but you get the idea.

When women speak up about maltreatment, they’re subject to claims they’re harridans and worse, while men are looked at as strong if they fight back against unfair charges (or if they fight, period). The language many use when talking about men and women is also telling: Men chuckle, women cackle. Men are serious, women bossy. It doesn’t matter if the men and women are saying the same thing in the same way; they’re characterized differently.

I wish it weren’t that way. I wish more of us were more concerned with actual issues than whether Harris insulted Christians. (On that: In the C-SPAN live-feed video, I only heard the cry of “Lies!” rather than the reported “Christ is King” and “Jesus is Lord” that some are sure she was referring to when she told hecklers they were at the wrong rally; those interjections were enhanced artificially in the Fox News video I saw (remember, I came out of radio/TV news, so I know the sound of audio that’s been messed with, but this would be obvious to just about anyone). Having spoken on a big stage before, I know that the speaker can’t hear everything in the space, and I’m not convinced that Harris heard anything other than the “Lies!” person who was picked up on her mic. But sure, keep believing that a flip retort is worse than anything Trump has done to prove he’s not the least bit Christ-like.)

I wish more of us took presidential and other political races seriously.

And I really wish I and so many other women weren’t so used to being held to a different, usually much harsher, standard.