This article entitled Wages of Sin by Chris Hedges that appears today at Truthdig contains an excellent summary description of what we are witnessing with this collosally bizarre, corrupt and predictable election this year at the national level.  Note that it applies to both parties.  Unfortunately, even the relatively sane voice of Bernie Sanders is blown away by the moronic, vicious and unconscionable news coverage that ensures that an ignorant electorate remains in place. 

 "The loss of civic virtue, Plato wrote, left a population hypnotized by the illusions flickering on the wall of a cave. Such distorted images of reality—our electronic hallucinations are beyond Plato’s imagination—fuel irrational beliefs and desires. They foster a visionless existence. Our images are skillfully manipulated by the elites to keep the population entertained and passive. Those who seek to question the illusions are, Socrates warned, usually attacked and killed by the mob, which does not want its comforting myths punctured. When reality is too painful to bear, a population does not seek freedom or truth; it becomes an accomplice to its own enslavement. Epicureanism, the reduction of life to the pursuit of fleeting individual pleasure, seduces the public. Cynicism rules. Distrust is everywhere. The community breaks down, and, as Plato writes, “all goes wrong when, starved for lack of anything good in their own lives, men turn to public affairs hoping to snatch from thence the happiness they hunger for. They set about fighting for power, and their internecine conflict ruins them and their country.” This collapse creates a dream world 'where men live fighting one another about elaborate shadows and quarreling for power, is if that were a great prize. …' "