This is not amusing

The fact that Trump is still leading is very scary. In the beginning, it was funny watching a showman bluster and swagger. He was laughable. Even Hillary laughed when talking about him. Now, she’s not laughing.

Apparently his appeal is that he says things that no one else will and he fights without ever backing down. It is scary to think there is a sizable population on the Republican side who admires him, despite some very ugly things he has said. This means there is a large sector in the American populace harboring fear and hatred and, I am afraid, will be very easily led toward violence. I wonder if there is a same small number of folks leaning in the same direction on the Democrat side?

On Democrat side, there are a lot of people following Bernie Sanders, who actually comes across fairly reasonable (in spite of his idea of free college education – I don’t know where we would get the money but it’s a nice idea) compared to Trump. He is not spouting hatred. Instead he has spoken out against the constant discussion about Hillary’s emails or Bill Clinton’s unfortunate past proclivities. Sanders rightly says we have bigger problems than emails or Bill Clinton’s past. But Bernie Sanders supposedly leans very far to the left, and the fact that a lot of people supports him says a lot about the people’s mood: they are unhappy with the way things are going and willing to vote for something different.

The Republicans are unhappy but they are focusing on the wrong things: the minorities such as the Hispanics and the Muslims. The whites think the source of their misery lies with the minorities but they are wrong. The minorities come here because they want a better life, just like the white Republicans’ ancestors did. You can’t deny a basic human impulse.

The Democrats appears to be focusing more on the super rich and the big businesses, which I think is the right focus. It looks like for at least a decade, if not for 30 years, money have been flowing from the middle class and poor up to the very wealthy via outsourcing, offshoring, automation and low wages. Plus cutting taxes for the rich and cutting social support for everyone else. So while productivity has been going up, money has been transferring from the regular folks to the rich.

So both the Republicans and the Democrats are unhappy with the current state of affairs but for some reason, the Republicans have pinpointed the wrong cause for their angst.

Whatever the case may be, we now have Trump in the lead and Sanders (who really is not radical like Trump is radical) showing a good fight.

We live in very scary times.