Entirely too many people are going to vote for Donald Trump today.  Right now, it’s looking like somewhere around 45% of voters will peg Donald Trump as fit to be President of the United States.  This represents a scar on the psyche of our nation that will not easily be healed.  I have no answers to give.  Like The Weekly Sift, I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation.

This election has scared the hell out of me like no election ever has.  Even though I knew logically from the beginning that it would result in the first female President of the United States, there is still agony and angst at the fact that this election is way closer than it ever should be.  There is this cult-like fanaticism surrounding Trump that is absolutely terrifying.  He’s a successful businessman despite all the evidence that the only thing he has even moderately succeeded at outside of his inherited real estate empire is building a brand around his name.  He has a great respect for women despite every single word that has ever come out of his mouth about women being abhorrent.  He has a great relationship with The Blacks despite the African-American community as close to unanimously as you can get being against him and his characterizing the community as ghettos and war zones, always to white audiences.  He has a great relationship with The Latinos as well except for the fact that he regularly demonizes them and wants to break up their families and attacked an American judge of Latino heritage and said he wasn’t able to do his job because of that heritage.  Then there’s Muslims.  At least he’s consistent with his denigrating that group without claiming any affinity with them.  That, I think most of all, his followers admire him for.

How do you combat this?  I don’t know.  Support for Trump is just so outside the realm of reality that I don’t know any solution except to stare dumbly like I would if an alien spaceship proceeded to land in front of me.  Never since I’ve been politically active has there been someone so distinctly unqualified to be President and yet here we are with Trump having a non-zero chance of winning.  When Sarah Palin hit the national spotlight with her ill-conceived Vice Presidential nomination, I was convinced we couldn’t get any lower as a nation.  Trump is the super-Palin. playing to even baser fears and even less articulate, and I have no faith anymore that we have hit bottom.  Flying Spaghetti Monster save us.