The country is falling apart

[Trapsy]

It is pretty bad.

This all started in 1992 when Bill Clinton went on Arsenio and played the sax.  This was something candidates for President just didn't do.  But Clinton found ways to bypass the "mainstream media".  Now, they all do it, Republican and Democrat.  When I think about it, there was an inevitability of campaigns becoming more and more ridiculous.  Social media has only make it worse.

[Trapsy]

This is gonna sound partisan and I am not sorry but I blame the Republican party for Trump. The way the establishment weren't adults with Obama during his presidency and excused people like Trump and Palin. I am sure Obama screwed up in many ways since he really didn't have governing experience. The guy gave up on Medicare and Social Security to Boehner and he was denied any compromise. Anything he touches its a refusal. This hostage on the supreme court is the same thing.

HRC is a very flawed candidate that creates unnecessary problems but it's really annoying to see you guys on the forum try and place this blame on her. Dems have their own issue but the republican have to change the way they operate. This should have been a slam dunk this year but Trump was the consequence of the republican party overreacting to the Obama's presidency.

[Trapsy]

This is gonna sound partisan and I am not sorry but I blame the Republican party for Trump. The way the establishment weren't adults with Obama during his presidency and excused people like Trump and Palin.

You're allowing partisanship to fog your judgment on this. While those events were obviously a prelude to our current predicament, they are not what directly led to it. The reason I make that argument is simple: look at Europe. A growing right-wing movement that embodies many of the same characteristics found in Trump's politics are happening in Austria, Switzerland, France, Germany, Denmark, Holland, United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and elsewhere in Europe, albeit with their own qualities unique to their cultural context. These are concurrent developments that are cross-cultural. Would you blame the Republican Party for directly causing the parallel rise of the right-wing in Europe? Thus, the problem goes deeper than merely American political events, but something that is below the surface and shared between nearly all Western countries. That doesn't even mention the phenomenon of a social media-savvy terrorist group with a significant composition of European-derived fighters.

Fair point.