I am seeing this election partly through the prism of my family.
There has been a continuous fight involving attorneys since my sister died.
My cousin said that after all, "Grandmother's money" had paid for my medical school education but not my sister's graduate education.
Now, there are all sorts of interesting beliefs around this.
1. Grandmother paid for my tuition. I worked for five years before going to medical school. I lived very cheaply. I had 21,000 in Stafford Loans by the end. I paid the loans off in two years. My tuition was about 28,000 total for four years.
2. Grandmother left money to my mother and her brothers. My mother died and left it to my father. My father paid my sister's graduate school debt directly to the state: 52,000 dollars.
3. My uncle asked "What happened to my mother's money?" Um, well, Grandmother died in 1994 and he would presumably know what he and his brother and my mother inherited. I don't. But.... to the family it is still Grandmother's money. Now, did she earn it? No. Did her husband, the physician psychiatrist professor earn it? Uh, no. Most of grandmother's money was given to her by grandfather's rich uncle as a trust beneficiary, supposedly because my grandmother served him "shit on a shingle" and charmed him. At least, that was the story my mother told. At any rate, I saw one of the four checks when the trust ended in the 1990s and it was for 400,000.00. Not bad. I asked my cousin and uncle if we could call it Great Uncle's money instead if we were going to name it after a family member. Nope.
4. None of it matters. Facts don't matter. Evidence doesn't matter. I could send my maternal family all of the thousands of pages of financial information that I inherited and none of it matters. They have an entrenched belief that my father was cruel to my sister and withheld money from her. And that I am cruel and dishonest as well.
5. Back to the campaign. Mr. Trump does not worry about facts. He doesn't worry about evidence or truth.
Mr. Trump is just like my family.
It is terrifying. Because anyone in the world could be the target of a set of beliefs that have nothing to do with evidence or facts or truth. And they could shout as loud as they want and it would not matter.
If they are the target, the identified enemy, the villain, the scapegoat.... there will not be anything they can do. Weapons of mass destruction, anyone?
A hung jury. People who need enemies. Because we can't admit that the REAL enemy is inside ourselves: our hatred, discrimination, assumptions, beliefs, violence, all of the sins that the world's religions warn us against. The shadow projected, the shadow of being the "greatest country in the world", of being "number one", of selfishness and grandiosity and an unwillingness to share. Greed, lust, all of the sins.
And I am afraid that BOTH candidates are liars. Is the one that voices hatred any worse than one who hides it?
It is terrifying.