File this under clouds with silver linings.

If you support Hillary Clinton, as I do, you're becoming familiar with all the disadvantages women have when they compete with men.

I saw it in the debates with Bernie Sanders. He would talk over her, wave his hands at her, and it was clear she couldn't object. There were so many things we would never tolerate from a woman that are seen as commanding or signs of strength in men.

And it's happening again in the competition with Trump.

He's pouring a waste dump full of garbage into the political commons this year, while Hillary has dropped a few pieces of litter here and there. But what are we focused on? Certainly not on the scale of relative importance. Trump has said he doesn't plan to uphold the First Amendment. He might use a nuclear weapon in Europe. He wants to withdraw from our international commitments, and declare war on Mexico.

She used a mail server to send and receive classified documents.

One of her aides suggested doing something evil to Sanders, and was shot down almost immediately after.

But it's second nature I guess to examine every nook and cranny of Hillary's humanity over and over, while letting Trump slide on his openly declared plans to basically destroy the order in the world, and let's see what happens in a world with nuclear weapons. Everyone makes mistakes, we might say about him. But this is a job where even one mistake can cost us human civilization.

With such extreme differences, the thing we're learning, if we come out the other end with an intact culture, is that we need to learn to treat women as equals in every way. There's no doubt the woman in this election is the only one who we can trust to do the job. Yet for reasons that are mysterious to me, we could go the other way.