This grotesque 2016 US Presidential Election.

BAYANGGUDAW NOTES. 23 Nov 2016. WED. N1.
Quote, Unquote: This grotesque 2016 US Presidential Election.

Senator Bernie Sanders has said it right: the recently concluded US presidential election was grotesque. An impossible grotesque. A theatre of the absurd.

It looks like in the years to come, the Democrats will have to do a checklist of what error they have passed on as true, and this includes the painful truth that somewhere in the eight years of the Obama presidency, life has not turned out to be better for the average Americans.

We grant that Obama inherited an economy gone bad from Bush 2, and that the wars here-and-there had only made the industrialist of the war games richer and richer, but that, at day's end, is not an excuse for not doing better for the average American during the last 8 years.

In terms of political semiotics, Clinton candidacy extended the fearsome notion of continuing American oligarchy, with choices reduced to the same names. Never mind that Trump was not a better choice: it was that he promised a lot, and those are the promises that the disenchanted people wanted to hear.

Populist politics, they call this, and it happened in the Philippines, with the Duterte presidency proving the efficacy of that same abracadabra.

Now, this is what Sanders has said at a GQ interview:

"I think we expanded consciousness in terms of possibilities. What we basically did is ask a simple question: Why should we maintain the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality that we have? Why? Why are we allowing this country to drift into an oligarchy where a handful of billionaires are buying elections?"

WPH/