The Dems Are Deluded.

Everything awful that Trump says is already policy. We already have a wall between the United States of Mexico and America. We already have judicial and economic systems that exploit immigrants and disproportionately target blacks, latinos, and muslims. We are already a racist and sexist nation. The Dems give lip service to changing that reality – as do the Republicans – but the fact is it does not change until the people change. Only then do both Republican and Democratic parties also change.

Everything good that Trump says is a threat to both Democratic and Republican policy. Cooperate with rather than antagonize Russia (and others). NATO is a cold-war anachronism. Make deals rather than threats. Protect jobs and personal dignity and security rather than corporate profits. Restore the separation of insured and speculative banking. Provide universal health care and maintain our infrastructure to reflect the success of an advanced democracy.

After Obama perfected the balance that Al Gore sought but couldn’t clinch – an embrace of Clintonism/Reaganism along with a prissy paternalism as the only difference from predecessors and rivals – as well as suave hypocrisy while pursuing both neoliberal and neoconservative agendas, it should not be surprising that people find Trump’s vulgarity to be refreshingly honest.

And after its diminishment for many people under the administration of the man who ran on the word, it should not be surprising that Trump’s populist rhetoric inspires hope.

As Bill Clinton instinctively grasped, people look for both hope and cheap entertainment in their figurehead: H.C.E. (cf. Finnegans Wake).

Trump, too, seems to grasp it intuitively, whereas Hillary Clinton tamps down hope and has but fear to offer. With her, the hope is only that she will dispel the fear that she herself invokes. Entertainment lies only in the cynical prospect of defeating the enemies she herself manufactures. It’s a never-ending spectacle of death and redemption.

But it’s not a game. Those enemies have human identities, and then they are ruined and killed. Between Trump and Clinton, only the latter already has muslim and black and latino blood on her hands and promises to spill ever more.