Trump is merely a symptom of the complete power of media and popular culture in our politics. If elected, Trump would be the first Reality-TV president. In that way he's a bit different than other third party types in history. This all really started with the Kennedy/Nixon debates in 1960 and we appear to be getting close to arriving at its ludicrous extreme result. The side show becomes the headliner.
We get left with a choice of true socialism or a media protest-vote caricature. Any true right of center option finishes a distant and tepid third place, never being a serious challenge to the very solid left or the wild, publicity-hogging protest candidate. This is a political system devolving in chaos into soft totalitarianism before our very eyes. The Republicans have become the Washington Generals to the Socialist's Harlem Globetrotters...it's all for show with the participants getting their piece of the box office take.
