State of Play...Today

This whole election thing is a big fat mess.  Most people don't like either of the knuckleheads running and are turned off by the whole thing.  And the third party alternatives only mean that your vote will go to the person you probably loath.  A friend posted this analysis over on FB by a guy named Andrew Klaven.  When I read it I said, "yep...that's pretty much it".  Maddening!

"The more I watch this election unfold, the more it seems we have chosen two candidates to represent our moment exactly: a struggle for power between a corrupt elite and an angry mob.

"Our elites — by which I mean those in power and the media who support them — are corrupt all right. Imperious and entitled too. They believe they have the unbridled right to declare our laws, take our money, make our decisions, govern our opinions and distort the flow of our information in order to stay in power. That a major presidential candidate could collapse at a public event and have the news media essentially black out and then under-report the story is simply the latest example of just how rotten and collusive these true deplorables are.

"On the other side is the mob. The mob is what a people become when they are governed badly, when they grow — justifiably — angry beyond reason. We in America are used to thinking of "We, the people," with respect. But when the people become a mob there's little to respect in them. When the people become a mob, you are way more likely to get crucifixions and guillotines than a fresh adherence to constitutional law.

"A corrupt and rancid elite could have no better representative than Hillary Clinton. Even her body is rotten. Stories of her destroying the evidence of her dishonesty with hammers and digital acid — while the media cry, "There's no smoking gun!" — are simply a narrative enactment of the state of our government and their Pravda; their venality and, again, entitlement.

"Remember the startled faces of the congressmen who returned home to their enraged constituents after they crammed Obamacare down the throats of an unwilling populace in 2010? They were annoyed to discover that the people expected their representatives to represent them! I still recall California Congressman Pete Stark explaining to one woman that, "I think that there are very few constitutional limits that would prevent the federal government from rules that could effect your private life.... The federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country."

"What would our founding fathers have said about Stark's comments after they were done hanging him? Yet Stark's attitude is the attitude that Hillary embodies.

"And in the mob's corner: Donald Trump. Mobs are angry, dishonest, brazen, unpredictable and with a penchant for violence. So is he. Like corrupt elites, mobs also feel entitled. They think because their anger is justified, it ennobles their base bigotries. They think because their anger is justified it puts them above logic and principle. They think because their anger is justified it trumps their obligation to decency. One only has to listen to the uglier voices of Trump's alt-right supporters to know that, for all their pseudo-intellectualism, they are the mob in the flesh.

"I'm an American. My heart is always with the people. Even knowing I'd be on the list of those to be guillotined, I can never quite give my support to the let-them-eat-cakers: a ruling class and media so dirty, so haughty, so dishonest, so bad. I cannot for the life of me understand those of integrity who feel real enthusiasm for The Donald. But even feeling the way I do about him, I can't help rooting for him somewhere deep down.

"It's going to get ugly if he wins. But then, to these eyes, it's pretty damned ugly now."

---Andrew Klaven