Donald J. Trump says the United States is a failed nation, but that he will fix it. He doesn’t say how, and God help us if he gets a second chance to “make America great” again. There are, however, some notable U.S. failures that we should own up to.

First, the Republican and Democratic National Committees (the DNC and the RNC) are complete failures. These two large bunches of lawyer-politicians, representing every state, are self-appointed to choose our Presidential candidates. Thus, we have them to thank for the pathetic Presidential election that is being thrust upon our sorry souls. The debate debacle made it clear: there is no good choice for our vote. Peggy Noonan writing in the Wall Street Journal called it a choice between ‘Awful’ and ‘Empty.” Trump is angrily deranged and Harris is smilingly bemused. He doesn’t know a lie or a conspiracy tale from the truth. She won’t stop smiling long enough to admit that there is an immigration crisis or that food prices are hurting people badly, especially the poor (and retired). But the DNC and RNC say we have to pick one. There are plenty of people in America well-qualified to be President, yet they have given us these two. The RNC and DNC have failed to properly do their jobs responsibly.
The founding fathers did a marvelous job writing the Constitution; there is so much that is good in it. But they failed on at least two counts, and we are now paying the price. First, they failed when they created the Electoral College. We have the them to thank for the ridiculous mess that the Electoral College creates today, a situation where only a small percentage of voters from a few states will determine the President. That’s democracy?
We know why that did it. It was the only way they could find and agree on that would get the smaller states to agree to the whole Constitutional package. But their failure to work out a solution to this problem lives on today.
And the founding fathers also failed when they created a Supreme Court with lifetime political appointments, no checks or balances, and no ethics rules. What were they thinking? They apparently naively trusted lawyers absolutely, a big mistake. Despite the failure, the Court worked for quite a while, but now it is politicized and it is not working. And so we have the Supreme Court to thank for giving immunity to Presidents, making them virtual dictators. And for eliminating instead of fixing Roe v. Wade, if it needed fixing. They are a failure.
Biden failed, too. People are giving him credit for quitting, but he never should have run. Then he waited to quit until there was no time to have a proper nomination process that could select a real candidate. So Kamala was the only choice.

So here we all are, up Shitz Creek without a paddle in a tippy canoe. The election will happen; one of those candidates will win. If Trump wins, we get retribution, the end of NATO, maybe a war with China, Ukraine is lost, huge tariffs, and chaos. If he loses, we get a huge bruhaha over a “stolen” election, probably a violent coup, and smiling Kamala Harris going forward to wherever she is going forward to.
No wonder so many Americans are feeling badly! Though it’s not a failed nation, there are some important failures. And none of them are being fixed, or can be fixed.
We have to figure out how to live with it. It’s not only painful grocery prices – inflation in food prices continues unabated despite what economists, Democrats, and Harris say. It’s also illegal migrants in the cities and towns. It’s all those other things described above – poor candidates, the stupid electoral college, the politicized Supreme Court — as well as a Congress that is so divided it’s catatonic. (There are too many unserious Congressmen, especially Republicans.) And it’s the way Trump’s lawyers have successfully reduced the legal system to irrelevance. ‘How to Delay’ is surely now the most popular course in Law School curricula. Delay works.
There is nothing we the people can do. Oh, vote, of course. We can pick one in states where it matters. But what else? We have to somehow try to hold it together so I wrote my Congressman. After a couple of months, I got a two-page letter back, which I’m 98% sure was written by chatGPT.
The election: no-one knows who will win. Certainly not I. It’s such a distasteful choice. Trump just gets worse and worse. And now we know why Kamala was so silent as VP: besides the fact that Joe didn’t want competition, she has nothing to say. Forced to choose, I think Trump will win. If not, he may just take it. Remember that Hitler lost his election too, but ended up Chancellor.
Just Sayin’.