My apologies.  This is the wrong photo.  This one is from the election circus in the year 2024 when all will be better with a new, improved Clinton-Trump dynamic duo.

In a more serious vein, yesterday over at Thruthdig, Chris Hedges wrote: "The multibillion-dollar extravaganza of our electoral Circus Maximus is part of the smokescreen that covers the ongoing devastation of globalization, deindustrialization, trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, endless war, climate change and the intrusion into every corner of our lives by the security and surveillance state. Our democracy is dead. Clinton and Donald Trump do not have the power or the interest to revive it. They kneel before the war machine, which consumes trillions of dollars to wage futile wars and bankroll a bloated military. To defy the fortress state is political suicide. Politicians are courtiers to Wall Street. The candidates mouth the clichés of justice, improvements in income equality and democratic choice, but it is a cynical game. Once it is over, the victors will go to Washington to work with the lobbyists and financial elites to carry out the real business of ruling."

Does anyone really think that either of these two can roll back the insanity?  They are the insanity.  Let us take a case in point and ask if Mommy Warbucks or The Donald are even dimly aware and if they are, why are they not speaking about it?.  Juan Cole wrote separately at Truthdig: "A Boston U. political scientist estimates that as of 2016, The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars have cost the American taxpayers $5 trillion. That number isn’t important when we consider the human cost: Some 7,000 US troops dead, 52,000 wounded in action; hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead who wouldn’t otherwise be, 4 million displaced and made homeless, etc."  So which one speaks to the consequences of this madness?  Nobody.  But the babble is about medical records, states of health, the polls, looking presidential, debate schedules (gotta avoid those football dates!) and who loves/hates Putin the most.  But the toll mounts in terms of the drag of a half a trillion dollars in interest on this debt and the trillion or more that it will take to care for our veterans until they have the good grace to die or commit suicide and cease costing us so damn much money.

Yet you hear little to nothing of this from the media, even the risibly called "progressive" outlets.  It will be fast burn with Trump or slow burn with Clinton but there will be the burn.  Hedges goes on: "History has amply demonstrated where this will end up. The continued exploitation by an unchecked elite, and the rising levels of poverty and insecurity, will unleash a legitimate rage among the desperate. They will see through the lies and propaganda of the elites. They will demand retribution. They will turn to those who express the hatred they feel for the powerful and the institutions, now shams, that were designed to give them a voice. They will seek not reform but destruction of a system that has betrayed them."

And then the fun begins.