How would Satan vote?

The one thing that has struck me most forcibly about the Donald Trump campaign is the extent to which it is a coalition of conspiracy theorists. From 2011 "truthers" and Obama "birthers" the entire campaign has been littered with sinister accusations, allegations and suggestions of dark conspiracy on behalf of The Donald's opponents. This evening, reading the torrent of Tweets about the US election there's a steady trickle of "the voting machines are fixed" suggestions from Trump's supporters - the US equivalent of "use a pen".

From among this seething pit of madness it's hard to plump for just one conspiracy about Hillary Clinton, Democrats or the election that sums up the depressing ignorance of Trump's campaign. Until that is, the "Clinton is a Satanist" line arrived. This didn't so much as jump the shark as do a double back somersault over a vast tank of piranha. But here it is at Trump's Conspiracy Theorist-in-Chief's Infowars blog:

Hillary Clinton’s ties to satanic rituals and the occult have been well-documented for decades.

Clinton insider Larry Nichols told Infowars that Hillary Clinton used to attend a “witch’s church” in Los Angeles during Bill’s presidency.

And a source claimed many FBI agents consider Clinton to be “the Antichrist personified.”

And Alex Jones (the conspiracy mane who runs Infowars) goes on to provide link after link, video after video each one madder than the previous and all purporting to 'prove' Hillary is a Satanist (which she isn't - I bet she's never even rolled a 20-sided dice). The source of all this stupidity is a particularly odd artist called Marina Abramović who is the modern performance art equivalent of a 'shock-jock':

Her work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Active for over three decades, Abramović has been described as the "grandmother of performance art." She pioneered a new notion of identity by bringing in the participation of observers, focusing on "confronting pain, blood, and physical limits of the body."

It's an acquired taste (as anyone who has seen her cake would know) but Abramović is a recognised - even acclaimed artist. The hoo-hah here results from an email (it would be an email, wouldn't it) inviting John Podesta to a showing of 'Spirit Cooking':

“Spirit Cooking” is an Abramović piece supposedly inspired by famous Satanist Aleister Crowley’s occultist rituals. It involves the artist painting the walls with menstrual blood, breast milk, and other bodily fluids.

It may not be all that wholesome but it's just art (and John Podesta's bother Tony is a big time art dealer and collector) with as much connection to Satanism and Black Magic as that 20-sided dice I mentioned earlier. Yet Alex Jones and other Donald Trump enthusiasts lap this up - indeed a depressingly large number seem even to believe Hillary Clinton is some sort of Satanist witch literally hell-bent on destroying the city on the hill that is America.

There's only one word for all this - bonkers.

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Late Night in America (and voters have a lousy choice)

Like most political geeks, I like a good election in a place where I've no skin in the game. People who know me well will have witnessed this obsession - with local election results in France and mayoral elections in Brazil among other excitements. The Big One, however, is the US Presidential Election - this is the daddy of votes, the grandest and most extravagent of all the world's elections.

And most years the US gets a pretty good choice. We don't have to think much of Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Bob Dole and John McCain to appreciate that all of these men would have made perfectly fine presidents for the USA. Not as good maybe as Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barak Obama but perfectly OK. It has always been something of a reassurance that the convoluted, over-long and expensive system of primaries, caucuses and straw polls does result in a final contest between two folk who'd make a decent fist of leading the nation.

Until 2016 that is. This year the American voter is presented with a lousy choice. And that's being kind. I struggle to find anything good to say about Hillary Clinton except that she isn't Donald Trump. Hillary is the distillation of the worst sort of crony capitalist, faux-lefty, heart-on-sleeve, crocodile tear liberalism. Rising to the top without any opposition - Bernie Sanders was a joke candidate - Hillary is comfortably the weakest democratic choice for president since Mike Dukakis. Yet she is very likely to win.

Hillary Clinton will win because the Republicans - the Grand Old Party - have lost their collective marbles and selected perhaps the only sort of republican who can actually lose. Not that Donald Trump is, in any recognisable way, a conservative let alone a Republican. It really beggars belief that the Party of Abraham Lincoln, Calvin Coolidge, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan has selected as its candidate a massive charlatan, a creature of the corrupt establishment who inherited billions and has contributed nothing except to appear in second-rate reality TV shows and build over-piced New York apartments for the super-rich.

What is worse is that Trump has got this position by appealling to the most venal, bigoted, nasty and selfish negativity in US life today. The Donald's platform is a muck up of racism, protectionism, the poisoned legacy of 20th century Progressives and 19th Century Know-Nothings. A ghastly brew of bigotry, lies and appeals to grievance without an offer of betterment beyond the banal slogan "Make America Great Again". This is the man whose recent political career started with him claiming Barak Obama wasn't an American (or at least not born there) - that most racist and least appealling of Alt-Right conspiracy theories.

It really is a terrible time for the USA. And it will be one of the most depressing elections in a long while. For what it's worth - and I'm no expert - I think Hillary Clinton will win at a canter. If Donald Trump wins more than a dozen states I'll be surprised. What is sad in all this, however, is that the bigoted, racist train crash of Trump's campaign will drag down good Republican congressmen perhaps handing the Democrats not just Clinton as President but control of the Senate as well.

This lousy choice might be an unfortunate lapse in the US system or could presage the country declining into bickering political clans more focused on undermining other people than living in the place Reagan's campaign described in 1984. It's no longer Morning in America, it's a late evening and we're presented with the spectacle of two drunks abusing each other, hurling spittle flecked insults about, shouting at all and sundry. It is a depressing and sad indictment of a great nation's corruption - not the corruption of the ordinary man and women but the corruption of the elite from which Clinton and Trump have slithered.

All we can hope is that this great and wonderful country, once a beacon of liberty, can find its way again, can live through whatever terror awaits over the coming four years under Clinton's corruption or Trump's bigotry.

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