I’ve recently come to understand that the upcoming election is not about Trump or Clinton as a Republican or Democratic choice. The majority of uninformed citizens just want a change and Trump is the new shiny thing that entertains them with his brutish, hateful, nasty persona.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This could be a bloodless coup by the ignorant over the informed. I don’t mean this as an analysis aimed necessarily at Kent or even Washington state voters (Amazon rated Seattle as the most well-read city in the nation) – but more of a national perspective on how the election seems to be shaping up.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Perhaps the polls are wrong or most of the Trump supporters don’t actually vote. But I’m reminded of the stunning Brexit vote in the UK. No one expected that either.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
More and more I’m seeing this election as the beginning of the end of the American empire, and I’m not exaggerating. Americans have stopped caring about the civic participation that a democracy requires. Citizens must inform themselves about the machinations of government and the ramifications of banks too big to fail.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
So, apathy among voters, the power and greed of people like Trump, and the consolidation of corporations will hasten another recession or, more likely, a crippling depression. I am convinced that most Americans have no idea what that will look like. Hitler took over Germany because people wanted a “strong man” running things. We know how that turned out.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I’ve resigned myself to the spread of willful ignorance across America. I didn’t realize how pervasive this ignorance was until I read several pro-Trump comments on major newspaper websites and noted the emergence of the white supremacist “alt-right” factions that are emboldened by Trump as the epitome of their racist philosophy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I had never watched Trump on his TV show and wasn’t aware of his crude, mean-spirited personality until the Republican primary debates. I thought he was just a common schoolyard bully – never a serious contender for anything of import.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
How is it that we have shunned politeness, mutual respect and regard for each other – and now revere rank vulgarity as somehow a more honest personality trait? Shades of Orwell …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The media pundits don’t understand the base nature of people who are attracted to the chaos of Trump. But I get it now: We get the government we deserve. And America may well be heading toward a devastating fall after Trump sells us all out. Think I’m exaggerating? We may well rethink the events of November 2016 when average Americans are standing in soup lines again.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When our vote is irrelevant.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
– Sandra Gill<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve recently come to understand that the upcoming election is not about Trump or Clinton as a Republican or Democratic choice. The majority of uninformed citizens just want a change and Trump is the new shiny thing that entertains them with his brutish, hateful, nasty persona.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-22672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22672"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=22672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}