Why This Election Is Close

With all that has occurred in this Presidential election season, one has to wonder why the contest is still so close with less than two weeks to go. Many will say that part of the electorate is angry and distrustful of politicians in general and especially so of Hillary Clinton. Party politics figure into the equation as well but these are not the real reasons that such a large number of voters are supporting Donald Trump. I suspect it has more to do with us as Americans than it has to do with Trump as a candidate. If you ask the average Trump voter the basis of his support, it has little to do with Trump’s polices or his personality. In fact, many of his supporters do not respect him personally.

The reason Trump’s support is so strong is the same reason why Americans go to NASCAR races and the same reason the ancient Romans went to the Coliseum. We, as human

beings on some level, enjoy watching the powerful suffer. Perhaps that is wrong. It is not so much that we enjoy watching suffering, we like to watch destruction from afar. Folks in the fly over states on some level enjoy watching the hurricanes roll into the east coast and secretly revel when Californians deal with earthquakes and mud slides. Donald Trump represents the earthquake that is poised over Washington. They want to watch Washington and the entrenched institutions therein crash and burn under the watchful eye of Donald Trump. They believe that it is time for politics as usual to be made to heel before a fairly elected destroyer. They believe that whatever havoc Trump can wreak in Washington will not really effect them. They could not be more wrong. I doubt they have even thought through what a Trump Presidency might mean to them and to us all.

A person like Donald Trump with absolutely no experience in government could and more than likely would lead us into the worst period in American history. I see race relations strained to the breaking point, worldwide economic collapse and America, a once proud democracy becoming the joke of the world community. Those concepts may seem abstract to most voters but if you don’t think those issues won’t effect you, your children and your grand children, you are sorely mistaken.