It's been quite the spectacle, this White House 2016 reality show, has it not?
For a nation obsessed with exporting its version of "democracy" relentlessly around the world, what we've seen for the last year or so should give everyone pause.
In the red corner, we have a septuagenarian reality-TV star running on no platform whatsoever other than the slogan "make America great again." One pithy slogan does not a campaign platform make.
In the blue corner, we have a septuagenarian career politician with more skeletons than closets.
This is the best American democracy can do?
Any journalism graduate toiling for the mainstream US media who remembers all that highfalutin twaddle about ethics and objectivity from their J-school days must cringe when they contemplate what they've been reduced to. Never before have big media been co-opted by a political campaign as thoroughly as the Clinton campaign has compromised them this year.
When Team Clinton is caught out dealing dirt to Bernie Sanders, our ever-vigilant guardians of free speech shift the discussion to Russia tampering with the election, and Clinton gets a free pass.
When the Clinton Foundation is exposed as a gigantic influence peddling machine, the story morphs into a fact-free harangue of Putin and his email-stealing ways.
Where during this endless campaign did you hear any real discussion about actual issues that face America? About the endless wars of choice destroying America's reputation and creating a refugee flood that threatens Europe.
About out-of-control military spending that's bankrupting the economy.
About the endless downward spiral of America's public education system.
About the 94 million working age American's who aren't working but don't count as unemployed.
About a health-care system that prioritizes profits for shareholders over health care for the sick.
About the crumbling infrastructure that's been allowed to continue crumbling by the Washington elite on both sides of the aisle for decades.
Aren't those the kind of substantive issues that a free press should be taking the political class to task over?
Instead, we've gotten endless speculation about Trump's tax returns and Putin's internet hacking.
America, you may yet have the most powerful military the world has ever seen, but the list of lands that want to emulate your corrupt and dysfunctional democracy grows shorter by the day.
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