An already empty presidential race continues to devolve into something like a family feud with scratching, punching, calling names, pulling hair, gouging eyes and rolling around on the floor. None of this is very presidential.
After Bernie Sanders' threat to the oligarchy of the economic elites was eliminated, all that was left is to see what version of the oligarchy we will have to live with for the next four years. On one hand you have the moderate oligarchy, continuing the trends away from democracy and toward the greater income inequality of the Obama years that Hillary Clinton represents. On the other hand is a more radical, take-the-gloves-off version of the oligarchy represented by the spoiled prince of the oligarchs, Donald Trump.
It is all in the oligarchic family, though.
It is a matter of slowly moving toward the cliff, pretending all is well and we are safe and immune from natural, economic and political disaster, or being confronted, now, with the reality of a disaster, and finally being spurred to action and making the necessary changes to save ourselves and our planet.
If moderate oligarchy is the preferred choice and I am not sure that it should be, then the tactics they are employing are perhaps counter-productive.
Although Trump-bashing is the preferred method of dealing with Trump, I would say it is quite self-indulgent, repetitive and boring. Every day we are confronted with seemingly intelligent and influential people piling-on with an endless litany of and-did-you-know-this stories about him and additional Trump gotchas.
They are preaching to their own choir and no minds are being changed. Pointing out that Trump is the same Trump he has always been is quite redundant. In fact, they have been willing to lower themselves to his level, and he has won some kind of victory now that he has them playing his game on his field.
Part of what makes it counter-productive is that in the process of the self-indulgent Trump-bashing we also bash those who support him... those who already feel alienated, disenfranchised and undervalued by the society. They have little regard for those who act so superior. They are a part of the real America, too, and rejecting them as uneducated, simple-minded and "deplorable" does little to invite them back into the fold of a democratic America.
Remember the effect that the Tea Party had on recent politics and having the "elites" looking down their nose at them is hardly helpful. Their ranks are enlarged by the massive frustration of most of the electorate with the slow decline of the standard of living for most of America while the rich simply become more obscenely wealthy... the austerity of the many to provide the prosperity of the economic elites.
And, of course, what is totally missing in this embarrassing melee is any real discussion of issues that effect most Americans, any real hope for a change of direction, any sense of an inspiring vision for a sustainable democratic future for us, for the nation or for the world.
Trump has always known how to manipulate the media and he is now calling the tune while, mostly, we dance to it. The Trump-bashing merely becomes the bass-line for that tune.
