The 2016 election has had zero effect on my perception of the truth. Same shit, different day. While I believe that most Americans believe in their respective parties for legitimate reasons, a great many Americans are willing to subjugate intellectual integrity to "win" an election for their party of choice. Party loyalty is mutating into a carcinogenic mass. Republicans said that Bill Clinton was not their president after he was elected. Democrats are saying Trump is not their president.
There is no such thing as reality; there's only perception. Caesar said, "What is truth?" He must've been close to the political pulse of Rome for that question to even occur to him. Truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The same applies to politics.
A house divided cannot stand, and dividing Americans into either the political Democratic or Republican party, or to utilize the Adversarial System in a court of law, is to take a Poison Pawn and expect to win a competitive game of indivisibility for the greater good. If only it worked. Politicians have been known throughout the ages to embrace dishonesty or war as a means of acquiring or holding power and riches. I perceive that very little has changed in today's world. Yes, there are some honest politicians in our Democratic Republic. But in a democracy, as it exists today, the good ones always get voted out of the public trough, and if said politicians become Loose Cannons, they will find a bullet in their head like JFK.
When I was young, my foster mother stated that voting always boils down to picking the lesser of two evils. The truth is that like Sartre told us, "We are condemned to be free." Christ said, "The truth will set you free." Neither neglected to mention that the facts would probably piss us off first. My spiritual advisor told me that I don't have to attend every fight him invited to and to never get into a passing contest with a skunk.
Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don't say it mean. Truth without compassion is cruelty. I respectfully submit that in a country where someone can get ten years in the penitentiary for punching someone in the nose, and someone who rips off hundreds of thousands of Americans for their life savings and only serves a small amount of time in a plush penitentiary, we should ask ourselves why is this the case? I think it's because people with money can get away with almost anything, and these are the ones who can secure political power in this country. They are the same lawmakers who send the poor to prison, and so unlike Christ, set the rich free.
Since I can't seem to get a real job, maybe I'll run for office.