PARIS — Polls say about 25 million eligible voters remain undecided as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump run neck and neck. A handful of states will determine the winner, in some by margins in the low thousands. The House and Senate are both tossups.

Wherever you are in the world, if you aren't terrified you're not paying attention. Just consider this:

Trump triggered wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, which so far have taken at least 250,000 lives. His self-focused pandemic response abruptly and painfully killed more than twice as many Americans he was sworn to protect.

This is a brief on what the world faces if he comes back, cushioned by sycophants, with the power to plunge Earth into nuclear winter. That is an unlikely extreme. But at the minimum, a delirious ignoramus intends to implant an autocracy ruled by the rich.

It all depends on how many of those 25 million persuadables think of their own families' future — along with everyone else's — and show up to cast a ballot.

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Inflation is Trump's doing. Prices rose because of COVID, Ukraine, corporate exploitation and climate. Joe Biden restored prosperity with jobs, rising markets and infrastructure. He lowered inflation far faster than the European Union or Britain.

America needs more, not fewer, immigrants. Bipartisan legislators agreed on a bill to patrol borders, process new arrivals and combat drug smuggling. Trump blocked it. He wants to tell the gullible that lawless "aliens" will slit their throats at their kitchen tables.

Beyond his felonies, flagrant lies and fascist demagogy, Trump denies climate change while America swelters in deadly heat or washes away. Damage this year is rising fast above the $150 billion it caused in 2023, not counting impacts on the ecosystem.

Scant time is left for concerted global action yet Trump doubles down on fossil fuels. At a private Mar-a-Lago dinner in May, he told oil company executives he would roll back Biden's environmental regulations if they gave his campaign a billion dollars.

Domestic and personal issues are important yet far less urgent than "foreign policy," which as usual languishes at the bottom of Americans' priorities. As a result, ill-informed voters enflame the embers that risk flaring into world war.

Many undecided voters say they don't know Harris's plans for America. A few keyboard strokes reveal every aspect in detail. Others say she has done little abroad; that affirms she has done her job. Effective vice presidents work quietly out of sight.

Dick Cheney lurked behind George W. Bush as he blew open Pandora's Box, creating legions of new terrorists. He now supports Harris, calling Trump the world's greatest danger. Liz Cheney, reviled for putting principle over party, campaigns at her side.

It is pointless to waste time on Trump's hard core. But for anyone with a half-open mind, here is a sampling of how Biden and Harris calmed turbulent waters Trump left behind despite stonewalling and sabotage by his perverted Republicans.

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UKRAINE

Middle East conflict overshadows Vladimir Putin's relentless drive to bleed out Ukraine. But the showdown in the heart of Europe aligns China and North Korea with Russia, an axis intent on stamping out human freedoms and values across the world.

Trump toadied up to Putin while threatening to disband NATO. When the Senate refused to impeach him for blocking approved missiles for Ukraine to extort dirt on Biden, Putin expected a walkover. He began amassing troops on the border.

Harris went to Kyiv to warn Volodomyr Zelensky what U.S. intelligence saw coming. Biden made Putin's plans public. Ukrainians, forewarned, were able to repel the initial onslaught. With American and European aid, the war rages on.

Trump says he would end the conflict in a day. That is, Ukraine should capitulate. Elon Musk, his new éminence grise, is okay with that. JD Vance says he doesn't care what happens in Ukraine. America first.

Speaker Mike Johnson now boasts that he got the House to send more aid to Ukraine. That was after Republicans spent six months flinging feces at each other, doing less than any previous House sessions in an imperiled world faced with climatic endgame.

Biden took over when NATO was, as French President Emmanuel Macron said, brain dead. Trump badgered members for money, ignoring how much they contributed in kind to support allied forces positioned to prevent war on their doorsteps.

He is leaving with an alliance that now includes Finland and Sweden. Some members pay twice as much per capita as the United States. Laggards are catching up fast.

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ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Benjamin Netanyahu has done everything possible since 1996 to thwart a separate Palestinian state. Opposing factions among Palestinians, some of them bent on random terrorism, gave him excuses to back away from the threat of peace.

Despite torrents of aid each year, all U.S. presidents have had limited sway over Israel. Beyond a powerful lobby, sentiment is strong for the internationally brokered Jewish homeland after World War II. Its thriving democracy anchored a tough neighborhood.

Israel repulsed Arab armies in a series of invasions and hung onto occupied territory. A two-state solution remained on the table throughout the Obama years. Washington opposed Jewish encroachment in the West Bank and tried to limit settlements.

Trump ended that. Sheldon Adelson and other ultra-Zionist donors funded his campaign. Jared Kushner, his Orthodox son-in-law, drew up the Abraham Accords with the Saudis and others. They condemned Palestinians to what is plainly apartheid.

Trump claims he has done more for Israel than anyone, and Jews who oppose him are ungrateful fools. In fact, he has done more to Israel than anyone else by entrenching Netanyahu who, like him, needs to stay in office to remain out of prison.

Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. He declared the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967, belong to Israel. Settlers swarmed the West Bank, some seizing homes and ancient olive groves at gunpoint. Incensed young Palestinians fought back.

By the time Hamas stormed out of Gaza for its monstrous attack, the unholy land was ready to explode. Which it then did.

Judaism is not a monolithic religion. Too many people in America and beyond make no distinction between Jews who want justice for peaceable Palestinian families and a nasty knot of hardline fanatics who now control the Knesset.

Campus protesters and Arab Americans in swing states bent on punishing Biden and Harris at the ballot box increase Trump's chances of coming back to make the situation far worse. Police now guard synagogues. Antisemitic attacks increase out of hand.

Biden has tried hard to moderate Israel's overkill in Gaza, push for a Palestinian state and prevent a wider war. But Netanyahu can ignore him when he gets 50 standing ovations at a Republican-organized joint session of Congress. Harris skipped it.

Tom Friedman made the crucial point this week in The New York Times:

"Israelis are being asked to send their sons and daughters to fight every day against Hamas and Hezbollah foes — yet cannot be sure if they are going to war to save the state of Israel or the political career of their prime minister.”

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IRAN AND ITS PROXIES

Hillary Clinton brought China, Russia, Germany, France and Britain together behind the Iran deal in 2015. She defined it as "distrust and verify," a twist on Ronald Reagan's old line about the Soviet Union.

Iran would emerge from its shell, allowing inspectors to monitor its nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions relief. It would enable moderates more leeway to relax strictures by the mullahs' regime.

Trump trashed it in 2018 and hurled threats of war at Iran, which went yet more rogue in response. It supplied Hezbollah with more sophisticated rockets and missiles to bedevil Israel from southern Lebanon, and it funded other proxies in the region.

Just recently, he blamed Iran for his attempted assassination in Pennsylvania and warned against a repeat. "If you do anything to harm this person," he told a rally, "we're going to blow the country to smithereens."

It was Trump and therefore unclear. By "this person," he apparently meant himself but possibly any candidate. "The country" referred to Iran or any other country with assassination in mind. The frightening part was "we."

It was a royal "we." Trump speaks as if he still has his twitchy fingers near the doomsday button and acts alone at whim.

This is what worries me most about Trump's lovefest exchange on X-Twitter with Elon Musk. He kept talking about nukes. At rallies, he boasts about the more powerful arsenal he pretends to have built up after replacing Obama.

This is a man who cares for nothing but what he sees in the mirror. His reply when aides told him Jan. 6 insurgents went looking for Mike Pence with a noose says it all: So what?

His minister of war would likely be Sen. Tom Cotton, an eerie ex-Army zealot who has ached for years to bomb Iran. Micheal Flynn, the disgraced national security adviser, urged martial law to seize ballots in 2020. "We're going to bring you back," Trump recently told him.

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CHINA

Bears back down when confronted, but dragons breathe fire. China is by far America's greatest threat, intent on gobbling up strategic resources and stifling democracy across the global south. It is also crucial to curbing carbon emissions and trade with the West.

Xi Jinping is in no hurry to dominate the world. Neither side would survive all-out war. He has problems at home. An uneasy coexistence with Taiwan has some benefits for him as long as no one raises the heat. He could throttle vital sea lanes but likely won't.

He depends on stable relations with the United States, with personal ties from top levels down through the bureaucracy. A U.S. president cannot lavish praise one minute, threaten a trade war the next, and then scapegoat China for a mishandled pandemic.

In short, the polar opposite of Donald Trump.

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These are some of the challenges abroad. Americans can simply listen for a while to TV babble for a sense of election follies at home. It is 2016 all over again, but this time not only Mexicans and Muslims are vermin who poison the blood of America.

And Republicans have gotten much better at voter suppression, intimidation and cheating.

Their self-proclaimed messiah is now a diminished angry man who spouts inane nonsequiturs when asked simple questions. All those felonies, purloined highest-level secret documents, sexual assaults and massive fraud are Democratic inventions.

Cultists call him fearless. He insisted on standing up for a dramatic gesture, putting at risk Secret Service agents trying to protect him from an active gunman. Then he decided on a last-minute whim to golf at an unsecured course with trees that shielded a shooter.

Both times, JD Vance blamed "the Democrats" before authorities could even begin to determine the would-be assassins were unhinged loners,.

Trump's sell-by date is approaching fast. A President Vance could be in power for more than eight years, surrounded by über-rich masters of the universe who see workaday Americans as sheep to flock.

The loudest voices against Trump and Vance are former Republicans who are ready to wait four years and then restore their Grand Old Party.

Lara Trump, married to the ex-president's dopey son, Eric, cochairs the Republican National Committee. She deflects reporters' queries on any subject by parroting the day's designated distortions.

Michael Steele, who once held the job, slipped into mock black slang on MSNBC to stress the democracy-killing danger of apathy. Those 25 million persuadables can give America sensible, sane leaders with solid majorities in Congress and statehouses.

"Y'all need to get off you' asses and overwhelm the ballot box this November," Steele said. "Because it's the only way you stop what's about to hit you upside your dumb head if you're not paying attention."

A bit of comic relief helps. I wish I was laughing.