Welcome to the desert

We’re living in a time when the presidential candidate who supported every bloody disastrous intervention in the Muslim world, who would do so again in Iran, and who has little but contempt for Palestinians, is positioning herself as the champion of Muslim civil rights and respect for the American armed forces.

We’re living in a time when the presidential candidate who has made practically his entire living off of real estate speculation and selling lavish fantasies to people who can’t afford them, is positioning himself as the spokesman for economically-depressed white Americans – who were the victims both of a massive speculative bubble in real estate, and of being duped into buying a bad bill of goods.

We’re living in a time when the presidential candidate who used her position to advocate for welfare reforms that depressed hundreds of thousands of families of colour, for police militarisation, and for capital punishment (which, in this country, disproportionally takes black lives), has given to calling herself a champion of ‘Black Lives Matter’.

We’re living in a time when the presidential candidate who has owned strip clubs, posed on the front of Playboy, and who recently had a young mother and her baby thrown out of a rally in Virginia, gets to pose as the candidate of faith and family, as a principled crusader against abortion and obscenity.

American politics in 2016. Welcome to the desert of the post-real.