Back to ranting…

Just under one week to go before – hopefully – we’re all put out of our misery – pro tem.  Having said this, whoever gets elected could give us an entirely new reason to be miserable..

With the acrimonious, personal mud-slinging that has characterised the current presidential electoral campaign, US politics have sunk to an all-time low – from which America’s reputation and world-wide standing is going to take a long time to recover.  If at all…

This election has fielded two of the worst candidates to date.

How could the American people have allowed this to happen so that a once great country has  descended into such a farcical situation???  (well, it might be farcical if it weren’t so bloody serious)…  Mind you, if Kim Kardashian and other reality TV ‘stars’ are an example of whom people follow in the various media, then perhaps it isn’t all that surprising..

Both candidates are mendacious and less than honourable.  However, Trump comes across as a spoilt, ill-informed bombastic demagogue who sadly, also appears to have to tapped into the misogynistic streak that so many (American) men still harbour about women.  For me, the frightening thing is the number of people who believe his lies and false jingoism – without any solid evidence to back up his claims about ‘making America great again’.  How does he intend to do this??

As for Hillary;  well, back in the UK, we have a term for people like her and her followers:  ‘champagne socialists’.   Hypocrisy at its sparkling best..

Neither candidate has shone when it comes to setting out policies;  however, at least Clinton might have some ideas up her sleeve.  Whether these are for the good of the country is another matter.  However, Trump patently has no idea about how he might run America, should, God forbid, he actually get elected.  An absolute disaster in the making..

He has polarised a lot of America by appealing to the LCD of the population;  the section that doesn’t really think for themselves and is easily swept up into ‘mob’ hysteria by cleverly crafted appeals to their baser, uneducated natures..  He has even deluded some people who technically  consider themselves to be well-informed and educated – all because they read newspapers and listen to ‘talking heads’.  Again, though, many of these people actually don’t think for themselves either.

Trump’s threat to jail Hillary Clinton and his inability to brook any opposition is the behaviour of a potential tyrant and despot.  Forget democracy – which is anyway only really the beginning of the slippery road to dictatorship;  think of all those countries that have / had the word ‘Democratic’ in their names.

A very far cry from the Founding Fathers’ creation of a Republic back in the eighteenth century and, really, really scary…