Tangerine Man

I've been so good.

Do admit, I've successfully avoided the 2016 election on this blog. I made a pact with myself, even though my sense of outrage, over these many months, made my little fingers itch to be on the keyboard.

But now, three weeks before the election, Donald Trump, the Tangerine Man (sorry, Bob Dylan) has finally driven me over the edge. It wasn't the recording of Trump boasting about his prowess in sexual assault, though that was an outrage. It wasn't his harping about Hillary Clinton's bad judgement, which seems to me the pot calling the kettle black.

No, it's his insistence that the election is "rigged," and will be stolen from him.

Arguably, the 2000 election was stolen from Al Gore, with the Florida recount and the Supreme Court's verdict in favor of Bush. But the whole system?

The whole system?

I guess Trump has forgotten any civics that he ever knew. He's forgotten that elections are run locally, and those who run them take them very seriously. I have friends who have been poll workers for years. These folks see the conduct of a free and fair election as their sacred mission.You wouldn't want to try pulling a fast one on them.

So Trump can spout off nonsense about a "rigged" election. He's spouted nothing but nonsense, after all. The problem is ... people believe him.

Who are these people, who believe that the Democrats can control the outcome of a nationwide election? They're the same folks who think immigrants are here to destroy our economy, Muslims want to blow us up, every household should have a gun, and the nuclear warhead is a real option in a conflict. Some of them have called for violence in the event that Hillary wins next month. That seems like sedition to me (but what do I know?).

God help us.  I try to be kind to Trump supporters, but it's getting hard.

Damned hard.

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