So how did we get into such desperate straits, with two thoroughly unpopular candidates for president of the United States?

That’s the question before us, now that we must face the fact that one of these deeply flawed individuals will be our next commander in chief.

Shame on us — and by extension our political process — for the choices we’ve made. It’s a sad commentary that this country — the guiding light of democracy, defender of the free world — saddled itself with such disheartening options.

Because in Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, that’s exactly what we have.

Donald Trump

Simply put, Trump — aside from his demeaning attitude toward women and his shallow concept of most issues facing our country — scares people.

Despite his successful run through the Republican primaries, where he steamrolled far more qualified candidates to earn the nomination, followed by his erratic, undisciplined presidential campaign, he has proven himself unworthy to hold the highest office in the land.

This entrepreneur-reality TV personality has demonstrated, with his hair-trigger temper and propensity to condemn entire ethnic and religious groups, that Americans can’t afford to allow such a loose cannon in the White House.

On the way, he has also insulted and alienated several key members of his own party, including U.S. Sen. John McCain and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

Yet, in his moments of clarity, Trump has offered some constructive solutions for what ails this country. We believe lowering this country’s corporate tax rate from 35 percent — one of the highest in the industrialized world — to 15 percent would revive President Obama’s stagnant economy and lead to well-paying jobs by repatriating those hundreds of millions of dollars U.S. corporations stashed away overseas.

He’s also correct in attempting to rejuvenate this country’s manufacturing base, in denouncing Obama’s support of the wide-ranging Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement, and promising to replace Obamacare totally with a competitive health-care system that would offer comprehensive coverage at lower cost.

Internationally, he has promised to root out ISIS ruthlessly, though how he would do so remains a mystery — even to him, we believe.

Yes, Trump’s “movement” has attracted a solid core of mainly white voters that has remained in his corner despite his multiple missteps, and yes, we’ve all heard that the flamboyant, public Trump is an entirely different person behind closed doors.

But can America take that chance with the leader of the free world?

Hillary Clinton

The other alternative is Hillary Clinton, a career politician with a checkered past, whose campaign seems based on entitlement — a lifetime Democratic achievement award supported by her gender.

Her litany of failings would fill the space of those 33,000 emails that disappeared from her private account. It’s amazing that after decades in political life, the suffocating veil of secrecy she has managed to maintain has prevented the American people from drawing a true picture of this consummate political operative.

However, from the dubious Whitewater land deal when the Clintons ran Arkansas, to flip-flopping on key international issues like the TPP, to castigating Big Business while at the same time delivering $250,000 speeches to the Wall Street elite, to introducing a pay-for-play State Department access via donations to the Clinton Foundation, to absolving herself totally of any responsibility for the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, she has exemplified the cynical, dismissive nature of a Democratic political machine she has helped to nurture for more than 30 years.

While Bernie Sanders tapped a growing discontent among young adults concerned about the hijacking of the political system by big-money interests, Clinton’s campaign has barely managed to register a pulse, unable to generate a semblance of that same excitement.

The profound lack of enthusiasm among millennial and black voters should be a source of embarrassment and worry. However, those two voting blocs don’t see any alternative, and will likely go Democrat — or not at all.

Clinton’s buoyed, not by an army of young adults and the disenfranchised, but by cozy relationships with corporate, mainstream media, which have produced fawning coverage of her campaign while downplaying or ignoring her plethora of faults — even coordinating with her campaign to maximize exposure.

Such skewed coverage is a national embarrassment — unprecedented in the history of presidential politics.

Unlike Trump, we know what to expect from a Clinton presidency — higher taxes; more vacillation on immigration; a far-left Supreme Court, shaping that body for years, if not decades; the same feckless foreign policy that continues Obama administration’s listless drift; and only minor tweaks to the Obamacare disaster.

In any other election, Clinton would be easy pickings for any reputable Republican candidate. If she were running against Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, Speaker Ryan, or Trump running mate Mike Pence, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

The inescapable fact is that Clinton and Trump are viable candidates only in relation to each other.

And so, yes, with two major candidates with the highest negatives ever recorded, it would be easy for the American electorate to sit out this presidential election. But as appealing at that prospect might be, it would be the ultimate cop-out.

If you leave the democracy — at any level — to a chosen few, you shouldn’t be surprised or dismayed at the results.

So we can’t let the American public off the hook. It’s easy to dismiss this process by saying it’s rigged — as Trump would have us believe. However, we’ve sown the seeds for our political malaise at the local level, where voters’ indifference with the process shows in abysmal turnouts at the polls.

Don’t succumb to that temptation. We urge you to vote — either for the lesser of the two main political party evils or the other two minor party hopefuls. Even a write-in would be preferable to surrendering your privilege.

And if you don’t want to be faced with such distasteful choices for president in the future, don’t sit on the sidelines. Get involved by staying engaged in the political process, starting at the grass-roots level and continuing all the way to the top.