If I may, Criss, I would just like to pass another observation by you. I’m not an American and so can be considered to be impolite in commenting on your elections. But one thing I’ve noticed from outside is that it’s usually impossible to tell where US commentators are coming from. This is because both the Progressive and Conservative commentators tend to use identical arguments, especially in their criticisms of Obama and Clinton. Indeed, in social media they tend to share and distribute the same posts and posters and do this without any sense of embarrassment.

I do find this a curiosity–and I’m not being critical about it–but it does make it rather difficult for external observers like myself to nut out who they are talking to at any time.

One observation I will make is that left leaning Progressives may dismiss Trump as a weird misfit and ridicule him, but, by contrast, they really and truly despise Clinton with absolute passion. It’s difficult from a distance to work out where that vitriol comes from, but accepting it as it is I can understand why their is such a loss of confidence in the political system amongsst the citizenry.

From our perspective here in Australia, where we enjoy preferential voting and proportional representation, the US non preferential ballot system seems so disastrously primitive. But then again, this criticism may be considered impudent coming from outside.