On tin foil hats and black helicopters: The sad truth of a world run by actual people, not Bond villains.

I wish I could subscribe to the black helicopter theory of the world, where a group of people in barely lit boardrooms plot false flag operations, manipulate the global economy and orchestrate the critical response to superhero movies. Apparently, they prefer Marvel.

The theory is appealing for two reasons. One, it means someone’s steering this world, and two, if we only toppled them, weed would be legal and everyone would get a raise. Well, only the people who “deserve” it. It’s simple. Stop the Masons/New World Order/Jews and you save the world.

It’s bullshit for countless reasons, but for me, these theories require a wholly new kind of human, somehow hardwired to delay gratification for decades and predict the precise machinations of thousands of people. The diabolical “they” are able to keep secrets for years at a time and weasel out of any effort to hold them accountable in an election or a court of law. It’s China inventing climate change to crash the American economy, or the US government faking the Newtown shooting to pass gun laws.

All powerful and all evil, “they” can be stopped by a small band of rebels armed with the truth and some guile, which as one meme pointed out, is either the plot of Star Wars or an ISIS recruiting brochure.

“They” are somehow without the petty drives and appetites that plague us all and eventually sink our best laid plans for world domination. I’m not saying there isn’t evil in the world. Quite the contrary.

I’ve been in shady financial services firms, political campaign strategy sessions (the ones that take place in the candidate’s living room) and the back alleys of cities like Medellin and Cairo. In some Shanghai bar, I listened as a Canadian oil man explained his favorite way to get blown is to hold the girl’s head underwater, since almost drowning really “motivates them.” Before this chat, I just assumed Shane Black made this up for The Last Boy Scout. So before anyone starts telling me about how things work in the “the real world,” let me assure you, I’ve been there.

But people who have never left the country, or their state, or their suburb, have some very firm ideas about the way the world works and specifically how politics work. They call President Obama both out of his depth, and a secret Muslim who seeks to undermine the American experiment with his brilliant plan. Of course, the easiest way to do that is to eat shit from your political opponents for eight years, kill countless of your fellow terrorists and increase the number of people with health insurance. As a Manchurian candidate, I’d say he sucks. Or more to the point, I’m voting for the Manchurian in 2020.

The Left did the same, ascribing George W. Bush the qualities of a moron and a diabolical mastermind at once, when it’s clear Cheney was the mastermind, who somehow brilliantly planned to lose the Iraq War for several years before the surge. Then there was the whole strategy of not finding Bin Laden. That worked out well, didn’t it?

And these were the folks that pulled off 9/11, both the mass killing and the cover-up. These people couldn’t even keep Scooter out of the jail. For the record, I speak of the man, not the muppet. The muppet would have been broken out by Kermit & Co by now.

And of course, this year we have the Most Corrupt Woman in the World, and Orangina Hitler.

Hillary, even as she pivots to the Left, is both secretly looking to serve the big banks and destroy them, guilty of murder and impossibly weak, smart enough to evade legal consequences for decades but stupid enough to set up a private email server to hide her shady dealings. Honestly, the Clinton Foundation sounds like an organization straight out of Mr. Robot: The secret philanthropic organization devoted to destroying the world. I’m not saying she’s innocent of any wrong doing, but can I suggest that perhaps some of these were mistakes, miscalculations and just screw-ups? You know, like everyone you’ve ever known?

And before you tell me about your friend Violet, I’d like to clarify that I’m not arguing that political candidates are like the people you drink with on Fridays, or Tuesday afternoons (Sorry, Tiffany). No, often times these were the people in high school who didn’t drink or smoke or discover the latest Seattle band that was better than Nirvana. (Dated myself, didn’t I?)

No, more often than not, our current “elites” were driven, ambitious people who devoted their lives to building resumes and gaining the experience to run for office, and then higher office.

This naturally makes them less fun and less likely to shoot from the hip. But chances are, they call you on your birthday and even show up at your wedding, even if they make you feel insecure about not being farther along in your own life. There is something “fake” about them and you don’t quite trust the nice things they say to you.

They may even be the kind to outflank you at the office for that promotion and know just how to stroke the CEO’s ego. They seem smarmy at times and you’d wish they’d stop trying so hard. But that’s what they do. Like you keep meaning to stop eating ice cream by the pint. I do that last thing. Not always, but it’s the worst thing I’m willing to admit to at the moment. For the record, I’ve done much, much worse.

But to believe the things touted about Hilary Clinton is to go well beyond a portrait of your ambitious, calculating co-worker. It’s to look past any policies she may have, and to simply loathe her as something less than human, and more devious.

I believe Lucifer was mentioned at the RNC. But do you really think Gwen in HR is secretly in league with the Prince of Lies? Maybe she is, but I’ve got a feeling it would be news to Satan. Much like I’m in league with Scarlett Johansson. She wouldn’t mind, but I’m not exactly on her radar.

You may know a truly malevolent person. A violent, selfish and unhinged personality that abuses everyone around them. The kind of person who abuses whatever authority they have. But let me suggest that these people are rarely disciplined or lucky enough to reach the heights of national office, or last long under public scrutiny. Bill Cosby was in the public eye, but he wasn’t scrutinized until dozens of women said he’d raped and drugged them. And yet, Kayne West remains in his corner.

Remember politicians do not have some special skill like music, writing or math to make their personalities irrelevant. Politics is very much the application of a persona to drive progress through others, even if you think the progress is going in the wrong direction.

If you want to see the difference between celebrity and politician, just notice the difference between how long it took to take down Cosby and how long it took for Ken Starr to come knocking about a consensual sexual act.

Politicians are scrutinized by their opponents and rightly so, but this means they have to be cautious in what they say and what they do, which makes them calculating or otherwise known as “soulless.”

Let’s say Clinton didn’t tow the party line and said, “I don’t bake fucking cookies because I’m a lawyer, you asshole.” Soulful, but a political flub her critics would argue insults stay at home Moms and cookie bakers. In my life, some bakers have done more for humanity than lawyers. Hey Mom? I love you but I’m not talking about you here. (This time. But you do bake great pies. See you at Christmas?)

Even with all that calculation, politicians still succumb to the local hooker or that bribe, or the paranoia that everyone is after them. Chances are, for people in this arena, someone is. Hillary is the most scrutinized political figure in an era when even a dentist on a hunting trip can be destroyed.

What baffles me is why she’s still at it, aspiring to be a partisan political leader to this day. Not a power broker. Not a manager. Not a pundit. But someone responsible for policy, or in plainer terms, decisions. It’s exhausting to decide responses to complex, thorny issues. It’s so taxing that George W only has the energy to paint shitty pictures of dogs and Tony Blair now.

This isn’t to say Hilary can’t make major blunders in her personal life and in policy. And good Lord, has she. She’s rightly held responsible for the Iraq war vote and her part in the “tough on crime” mandate of centrist Democrats that just turned out to be tough on people of color.

There’s little doubt that she’s not going to be as strict on the financial sector as it warrants. Not because of some secret quid pro quo, but because she was a New York senator. Wall Street is Main Street to her. She owns that stance as a defense against charges that she’s secretly a Marxist. And while that may play on Fox News, why don’t you look up an actual Marxist, say at a nearby park, and ask them if she’s one of them? When they get done laughing, chances are they’ll have a pamphlet for you. The Clintons sidestepped the Contract with America by swallowing a lot of it whole. That doesn’t mean it was all strategy to save the Democrats. Some of it was just to maintain their own power.

To this day, Bill Clinton should get an asterisk in history for his callous execution of a Death Row inmate with severe mental disabilities. People make terrible decisions for short term gains, which is at the heart of why long term, large scale conspiracies are absolute nonsense.

Because no one sacrifices immediate rewards and controls the shifting priorities and values of the people around them forever. Look at the Catholic Church. Not even they could hide pedophiles until the end of time. Although, as actual conspiracies go, that was impressive. I mean, hats off for not only hiding them for so long, but managing to convince most Catholics to shrug at the systematic rape of children. If there’s a New World Order, they should have a nice long chat at the Vatican.

Conspiracies require competence over the long term. That does not mean their aren’t bad actors and flawed systems. African Americans live in an ecosystem that remains devoted to assuming the worst of their intentions and a refusal to admit history haunts their fortunes to this day. But these bad actors and flawed systems hide in plain sight, a blend of good intentions, shoddy policy and warped beliefs, and that’s from the people who want to help the cause.

Some might argue that worst Clinton can do is perpetuate the status quo, while others have imagined vast plots to change the fabric of our country with a social safety net or expanding our forever war in the Mideast. But for Clinton to accomplish any of this, including maintaining Obamacare or current treaties, she’ll have to woo Republicans occasionally and we all know how much they love to help Clintons. As an experiment, I’d like Chelsea Clinton to ask Ted Cruz for a cookie and see what happens.

She also has to wrangle Democrats who are in the process of reshaping themselves into a party far to the left of her. In essence, she’s going to be arguing with Bernie and his ilk for her entire Presidency. And that’s a good thing. But she’s going to have to be incredibly effective to pacify the Bernie movement, nullify Republicans, and fend off the latest House Committee investigation into whether she ever folded her own laundry.

And on the other side, we have Trump. No one’s charging him with running a conspiracy to do anything but lose. We’ve all met a Trump, worked for one or even argued for our best friend to stop dating a younger version of him. He is a thin-skinned blowhard unable to look past a slight or feign a moment of humility. A man with his personality doesn’t climb to the top, because even a sociopath learns how to act nice, stifle an insult and shut up long enough for their superior to give them that promotion. No, Trump is a fellow that needs to be born on the 86th floor and take the elevator the rest of the way.

For decades, Trump has been in the public eye, but it’s his own behavior that brought the scrutiny. High profile bankruptcies, marital infidelities and his own yearning to be tabloid fodder generated all that material for his Comedy Central Roast.

He is not unique in his business success, as there are plenty of real estate developers, reality TV producers even lousy online MBA providers who walk away rich. The difference is they didn’t need the adoration along with the wealth. Maybe they did, but they didn’t want it bad enough to pursue fame with the wild abandon that Donald did for decades.

Think about that terrible manager you had at work. Don’t you see a little of Donald in him? The ridiculous declarations, the lousy attention to detail and the emotional intelligence of a toddler, all add up to your own personal Michael Scott. The Office ran forever because everyone has had that kind of boss at least once. Trump is Michael Scott, but born with a silver spoon in his mouth and without the self awareness required to feel shame.

This is not say that Trump is not a consummate showman and genius brand builder, that spoke in Tweets before Twitter existed. In a room, I’ve no doubt he could sell my own watch back to me.

And perhaps his greatest skill is knowing what the American people want the most, in a time of unprecedented complexity: simple answers to simplified problems. And that concept is the root of any great conspiracy theory. All that’s wrong with the world can be pointed to a single photo, or a single name at the top of your conspiracy vision board. The “truth” is out there, and it can fit in a Tweet.

Today, it’s easier than ever to mine through the smorgasbord of data and detail on the Internet to bolster whatever lunatic theory you have. Again, this is not to say there are not bad actors and bad systems, but I’m talking beyond premises like systematic racism, or regulation constructed to favor global conglomerates over small businesses. I’m talking about truthers and birthers, where someone believes in a sustained effort to get a very specific result.

Trump trades in these because if the culprit is one person or group, the answer is simple too. Build a wall. Ban a religion. Bomb the shit out of them. All we need to do is stop Lying Ted and Crooked Hilary and we’ll be great again. In a time when few of us can wade into the terms and conditions involved in buying Adele’s latest single, who the hell wouldn’t want it to be that simple?

Don’t pretend there isn’t a part of you that wants there to be a switch we could flip to solve climate change, income inequality and racism. Or at the very least, a person we could elect that would make all these things better, instead of worse.

But there are no Supermen or Wonder Women. No Hitlers, either. There was Hitler, and a long line of authoritarian madmen, but they weren’t Hitler either. Hitler required a specific time, a particular economic and political climate and plenty of other Germans not only backing him, but being able to use him a a vehicle for their own ambitions. Ask Chris Christie or Paul Ryan how that’s working out for them.

Trump doesn’t become Hitler because he’s Trump. He becomes Trump becomes of BOTH the people cheering him at rallies and the world around him. And before this post gets regaled with all similarities between the US now and the Weimar Republic in the 30s, let me say it’s not impossible for Trump to become an American Hitler, but a lot has to go right for him for that to be the case.

What frustrates me is Trump doesn’t need to be Hitler to do an enormous amount of damage. George W. Bush was a well-meaning, traditional conservative who plunged the Mideast into chaos because he lacked the curiosity to understand that part of the world. He was someone who bought trickle down economics wholesale and why shouldn’t he? All his friends were doing well. He scoffed at government intervention until Katrina happened and suddenly there were things the free market couldn’t do better. In short, he screwed up. He was human.

For the worst of a Clinton Presidency to come about, she needs to be everything her foes say she is: Cold, calculating, brutal and unfailingly corrupt, able to bend the FBI, the House Committees and the American media to her will. She will pet her Wall Street fatcats and launch one misguided war after another, all while raising taxes on everyone and bankrupting the country with plans that will somehow be approved by Congress who couldn’t approve a bill to stop the Zika virus. In short, she’ll have to be perfect.

For the worst of a Trump presidency, he doesn’t need to build a wall, or institute a ban on Muslims or round up millions of immigrants. All he needs to do is let Russian invade a NATO ally, or launch a trade war with China. Or refuse to honor the Iranian nuclear deal, so Iran can feel free to start building a weapon as soon as possible. After all, Trump has repeatedly asked why he can’t use them. In short, Trump doesn’t need to be perfect. He just needs to be himself.

If Clinton and Trump are in fact human, what do you think is more likely? That Clinton becomes a one woman liberal war machine, or that Trump remains the man he’s always been?