Donald Trump can't give you your country back...it's not yours and it never went away

[Trump] did not appeal to prayer, or to God. He did not ask Americans to measure him against their values, or to hold him responsible for living up to them. He did not ask for their help. He asked them to place their faith in him. He broke with two centuries of American political tradition, in which candidates for office — and above all, for the nation’s highest office — acknowledge their fallibility and limitations, asking for the help of their fellow Americans, and of God, to accomplish what they cannot do on their own.

Ah, those halcyon days…when those of who still harbored a flicker of hope for America believed that Sarah Palin was as bad as things could possibly get. At least we knew Caribou Barbie © lacked the intellectual candlepower to win over a majority of Americans. We were confident her appeal would flame out…because surely Americans couldn’t possibly be THAT stupid…right??

That was then….

Fast forward eight years, and I find myself struggling to come to grips with the knowledge that, at least politically speaking, we’re living in a barrel with no discernible bottom. Caribou Barbie © was only a harbinger of things to come. She foreshadowed a movement composed of forces, personalities, and movements so malevolent, so intellectually and morally bereft it would come to embody a very special sort of sociopath.

Enter Donald Trump, a man barren of any evident qualifications for the job of President. With no programs, few policy specifics, and incapable of speaking to America’s better angels, Trump has little of substance to offer. His effectiveness is rooted in his ability to appeal to the fears and prejudices of America’s lowest common denominator (and to lie big and lie often). He knows who to blame (gays, Muslims, African-Americans) and what to do about it (build a wall and/or ban them). That the first aren’t responsible for America’s perceived ills and the second not a solution (to anything) is to miss the point. Donald Trump knows his chances of victory in November are directly proportional to how successfully he’s able to keep Americans scared and stupid.

Say hello to President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. Or Emperor Palpatine. Or Benito Mussolini. Any of those options is a pretty damned depressing commentary on the state of the American body politic.