The 2024 presidential election cycle offers a clear version of how someone in a position of power can age with dignity or in toxic disgrace.

At the age of 81, President Joe Biden has withdrawn his bid for a second term as president, partly under pressure from Democratic leadership and partly because he accepted the reality that his age had compromised his ability to remain a good leader.

His move cleared the way for the younger and more energetic Vice President Kamala Harris, who was able to quickly build a campaign to challenge convicted felon Donald John Trump. Trump was only slightly younger than Biden, but was also showing clear signs of dementia due to his rabid narcissism, racism and hatred.

Biden was never my first choice for president, but he was a far better choice than Trump. Biden believed in unity and coalition building for a better America. Trump is a fraud who saw the presidency as an opportunity to get richer and build power to make him a dictator. He admires murderous monsters like Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Trump seemed to have a clear path to winning back the seat he lost to Biden in 2020, not because he was the better candidate, but because of growing concerns about Biden’s aging. Trump’s brain-dead MAGA supporters accept all of his 134,000-plus documented lies, his 34 capital felony convictions, his past cases of sexual perversion and rape, and dozens more charges that should put him in prison for the rest of his disgraceful life.

“He is a stain on our society,” says political activist and lawyer George Conway, who left the Republican Party in disgust because of Trump. “He is a narcissistic psychopath.”

Trump grew up a racist and a hater, and these traits have controlled him throughout his life. His niece, psychologist Mary Trump, was psychotic for most of her life.

As a professional reporter and photojournalist who turns 77 in about five months, I have watched hatred and racism divide this nation that was built on immigrants of different nationalities and religions. It was eight years ago when we moved to Prince Edward County, VA, just before a racist school board and superintendent closed the public schools to block a federal court order for integration.

They opened a private, whites-only school funded by the county, but offered nothing for blacks or other minorities. I asked to be sent back to the state and hometown of my late father (he died in a work accident when I was nine months old). Their schools were integrated. Instead, the family moved to another part of Virginia, where the county complied with the court order.

But the hatred and blatant racism I saw in Prince Edward County haunted me. Virginia was full of monuments to Confederate leaders, but there was little to honor those who fought for our country. After school, in high school, I drove my 1957 Ford to Washington to photograph Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, and later I was working for the Roanoke Times when he was assassinated in Memphis. I drove there on my own to cover the riots and the aftermath.

In 1969, I took a job as a reporter and photographer at the daily newspaper in Alton, Illinois, part of the St. Louis metropolitan area, and found the birthplace of James Earl Ray, the convicted murderer of Dr. King, and found that a black family lived there. They did not find out that it was Ray’s house. The house later burned down.

In the 23 years I have worked out of Washington, I have seen and reported on much hatred and racism around the world, including religious hatred, too much of it here in America, where Christians declare their religion can or should exist among us. Jews are very devout about their faith. So are Muslims. Most faiths have radicals and murderers. Remember the Crusades.

I grew up in a Presbyterian church. My wife and I were married by a Presbyterian. We love and accept God, but we are not affiliated with any religious denomination. Our faith is personal. We do not preach what we believe to others, and we do not try to make money from our faith.

Donald Trump is selling Bibles, a book that people who know him say he has never read. He charges $60 a copy or $1,000 for a signed copy and has made over $300,000 in sales. When asked if he has ever asked God for forgiveness, he replied, “No. Why would I?”

This is not religion or belief, this is fraud and blasphemy.