The plutocrats debate

Our presidential race is between two extremely wealthy civic minded candidates, though the metric is close to zero as is the optic.

Trump bothers us because we thought we knew the country we are living in, but it turns out we don't know it at all. Trump resides in the country we thought we knew, and his adherents reside in a different country, which causes the great confusion he preys on. Somehow Trump's able to speak in a way that causes his adherents to think not only that he's speaking on their behalf but that he's one of them also.

Of course Trump tells lies, he has to, telling his adherents what they want to hear by saying things that make them believe he's speaking as one of them. Trump's lies particularly bother the media, an institution that purports to present the truth; it's not so much the lies that nettle, it's that the corrections to his lies the media presents have so little persuasive power over the ones who shouldn't be believing them.

Clinton's cut from almost the same cloth, but with a few more stripes. She has far less trouble with lying-that is, she lies less than Trump-and far more trouble just trying to be herself. It's not that one day she simply woke up wanting to be president, it's that she was born wanting to be president. This disturbs some of us, and the rest of us are disturbed either because she's a woman or because she's married to an ex-president who actually seemed to enjoy lying. The media, deploring lies, is mostly supportive of her, preferring her smaller lies to his larger ones, believing that the country we now live in will be better off if it stays the same.

Monday night, candidates Trump and Clinton will explore the pros and cons of plutocracy; one will be a loser and one a winner.