As the United States approaches its odd 2016 election, one cannot help but be concerned the US is not handling history very well. Most of the incompetence can be laid at the feet of the electorate. What most apolitical observers, historians and futurists have observed can be assigned to peaks of change in how the Government governs and the lack of commitment and understanding by citizens of its own nation’s practices; compound this with a similar lack of commitment and understanding to what is fair and equitable to the citizens themselves.

It is obvious that whoever controls the Republic controls wealth, advantage, opportunity, power and the alternative, who will be poor, disadvantaged and denied the “inalienable rights” ingrained in the US Constitution. Given the US is the world power among nations, access to wealth, advantage, opportunity and power grants access to indescribable wealth taken even from its own fellow citizens.

One would surmise that the citizens would have learned this behavior by now and made sure that the electorate controls the government – not those who abuse it’s governance for self interest and greed. Often cited, the US has the lowest percentage voter turnout of all democratic nations. Those who govern haven’t helped by introducing gerrymandering, allowing wealth to steer politics, granting corporations rights that belong only to human beings and the vilest of practices, denying the right to vote equally, fairly and with as much ease as possible.

Given that the spirit of the nation is broken, repair requires deep introspection into the role of government and its relationship to the broad concepts, history-changing ideals, and interpretations of humanity and justice that have made the US a phenomenon of governance in its time. The spirit is so damaged that calls for revolution seem reasonable.

Combine a dissolving national precept with a lightning speed change in technology, automation, communication and huge overpopulation around the world and one is left bereft of social tools, historical value, and principled coexistence. There is no national foundation from which to conquer the future; there is no ethos that will avoid war and greed; there is no positive vision for humankind – humankind the species.

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The 2016 election will do little to begin repair. As with the last Administration, the best our Government can do is sustain hope – hope for a time when a person is again the most important entity in politics; hope for corporatism to return to the role of distribution not to include disrupting human rights and national equity; hope for that fleeting moment in time when governments work for the people and not for the power politics of the wealthy or the idolatry of “the way it was.”

The 2016 election will not produce healing or repair broken government. No one, not elected officials, racists, victims of disappearing jobs, wealth hobbyists, gun enthusiasts, and older generations lost in past virtues, are prepared to cash in the remnants of a seventy year old culture that has lived past its usefulness.

All four presidential candidates represent their visions of the past to a frightening degree. Today’s electorate is fraught with malpractice and ignorance; the old ways shroud the people’s vision of fairness and civic worth.

Donald Trump is comparable to a monster in a movie; Donald is an experiment in populism gone wrong; he is a 1945-style fascist, a racist, narcissistic, and altered by an abusive childhood into virtually having no emotional judgment. If elected, Donald will do what his base elected him to do: bring down the government – and likely the nation.

Hillary Clinton is a super achiever. She has the targeting power of a riflescope; she has persistence without distraction; she is a master of detail relating to whom, how, and what. But not why. The piece of the nation’s toolkit brought to the fray by Bernie was the why. In effect, Hillary is the new leader of the establishment. If the citizenry is fortunate, Hillary will become the new leader of the republican right but with civility and fair-mindedness while the millennials, during her eight years in office, will form the new democratic left. We voters can only hope to step up as well “to form a more perfect union.”

Ancient Mariner