I Looked, and Behold, a Purple Horse, and They Who Sat On it Had the Name Clump

     It took me four accounts before I could finally live-tweet the debate as the Totalitarian Twats of Twitter did what Twitter does and censored the first three for who knows how long this time. But live tweet it I did, even though I had to co-opt one of my book and writing accounts to do so, which must have looked strange to my bookish followers. But this post is based on those first impressions as I'd watched the live stream on that fascist social media site.
     First off, don't be fooled by the pyrotechnics of last night's debate, The Sham, Part Two. What we saw last night in Washington University in St. Louis was nothing more than inspired kabuki theater, two elderly, pasty white oligarchs trying to play the game of Statesmanship.
     And, secondly, that's what this whole charade is to them- a game. Let's not forget just 11 years ago, these two ate the same wedding cake and Trump once called Hillary Clinton "very qualified to be President."
     Thirdly, we saw and heard much of the same bullshit from the first in this rancid series: Trump interrupting Clinton, Trump interrupting the moderators, neither answering questions directly or honestly, Trump attacking Hillary on Iraq, Hillary attacking Trump on not paying his taxes. As with the first debate, Trump was sniffing so much that one expected to see a rolled-up $20 bill to fall out of his nose and John Goodman at stage right, his trusty bag in hand, asking someone, "OK, who's floating this enterprise?"
     Except this time around, there were two new wrinkles: The Trump tapes and Trump chillingly vowing he would have his Attorney General (knowing him, that'll be Birther Queen Orly Taitz) appoint a special prosecutor to look into her emails and try to have her thrown in prison.
     Now, I admit to being a bit bifurcated about this: While I admit to feeling some rush of titillation at hearing Trump mentioning Clinton and prison in the same sentence more than once, because her high crimes and misdemeanors certainly call for it, it was chilling to hear this during a debate.
     Never before in the 56 year-long history of televised presidential debates has one candidate vowed to put the other in prison. If this was intended to be red meat that he threw to his rabid deplorable herd, then I would say it worked and probably left them slavering for more. But the idea of a debate, or one would think, is for one candidate to make his or her policy positions clear in order to give the voters a reason to vote for them, not to vote against one or the other. It's not within the usual purview of a presidential candidate to threaten to throw his or her opponent in prison. Hitler did that and worse when he took over Germany in 1933.
     Besides, while a President Trump would have the power to appoint his own AG and every one of the 93 US Attorneys according to his pleasure, the Justice Department is still full of careerists who do not fall under presidential purview. The DOJ is the Place Where Clinton Investigations Go To Die, the abattoir of accountability, and the corrupt Loretta Lynch is only where it starts. Trump wouldn't be able to remake the entire Justice Department in his image but he's too stupid and/or ignorant to know that.
     But a party nominee threatening to throw his opponent in prison? Very chilling stuff, indeed, and we've seen this sort of thing before.
     The debate started off creepily enough even before it had begun.

     Trump had the chutzpah to hold a press conference with three of Bill Clinton's accusers and, seated to his immediate left, the woman who was raped as a 12 year-old child and had to see her rapist get off with a slap on the wrist after he was defended by Hillary Clinton (who also smeared the child's character in doing so).
     Dickens or any soap opera or legal thriller hack couldn't have planned that any better. But this Ghosts of Rapes Past scenario had no place just minutes before a presidential debate. For good measure, in some ham-fisted attempt to rattle Hillary even further, he had the quartet seated exactly where Clinton could see them.
     Of course, that sort of tactic could only work with someone who actually has a conscience, thereby disqualifying Hillary Clinton.

     At the sane time the Trump "locker room" tape came out, so did the hacked John Podesta emails that quoted Hillary Clinton as saying, "You need to have a public position and a private position on policy." In other words, "I'll tell the rubes one thing to keep them placated but I'll give the straight skinny to you One Percenters provided you keep paying me me $225,000 an hour."
     Therefore, it quickly became impossible to know if any of Clinton's answers were her public or private policy positions, since she wasn't in a boardroom or a conference hall filled with billionaires and multimillionaires like her but directly and indirectly addressing regular voters.
     When he wasn't threatening Hillary Clinton with his Night of the Long Knives, he was hammering Clinton on things that neither elevated his position or further lowered hers. Therefore, while she droned on and on about why she voted to go to war with Iraq and lied about a whole host of other things, Trump, as in the first debate, continually interrupted her and the moderators like the boorish asshole he is. In fact, at one point, Trump even whined that Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz were in league with Clinton and that it was "three against one."

     In short, the debate had all the elements of a good soap opera minus the dramatic tension and, as usual, Dr. Jill Stein won the debate from her detached platform on Twitter. We'll never know if Trump was in earnest when he threatened to put Hillary in prison but the trained observer could see the chummy, if momentarily antagonistic, familiarity between the two as they called each other by their first names. It was essentially a 90 minute-long medley duet driving home one point to that trained observer: Neither are fit to be President.

     Finally, I leave you with this image: Hillary Clinton seems to attract more flies than actual dedicated investigators. Yes, that's a fly on her face that she didn't bother swatting off.
     Jesus Christ, is there anything about this fucking election cycle that isn't reminiscent of a Clive Barker movie? Because when we hear virtually nothing but Pay-to-Play, child molestation, rape and other such rubbish that's fit only for the headlines of supermarket tabloids, then something has gone seriously wrong with our electoral process.