It is amazing how many schemes with good sounding intentions end up accomplishing exactly the opposite. The Iranian nuclear deal, Obama-care, gun control, minimum wage, equal pay for equal work, food stamps.   A fool’s dose of credulity is required to accept as accident consequences 180 degrees out of phase with advertised outcomes.  Today’s unfolding political realities are unmasking the truth that the intentions were never good; the actual results were planned and calculated.

The Iranian deal knocks the US down a peg, right where Obama wants us, stripped of the notion of “Super Power.”  Obama-care gains a larger control over people’s lives which gives massive power over to government.  Gun control legislation is a “feel good” reaction to things politicians can’t yet control.  The minimum wage buys liberal votes, fattens tax revenue and punishes business, again putting America in its place and shutting out sub-par workers, feeding the welfare state.  Male-female work equity assures that employers favor men for jobs and negates competition and finally, food stamps create a robust, underground cash economy, induces obesity without oversight and again, buys liberal votes.  While ads tell us 1 in 5 kids are starving, reality is that obesity is the biggest single health problem in the poorest communities.  Malnutrition is unheard of in the US, yet many believe whatever they are told, denying their own observations.

The campaigns of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders have pulled the covers off politics-as-usual.  As the back-room machinations of state’s methods for deciding delegates and supporting candidates becomes widely known, even more incredulity creeps into the American psyche.

Rene Descartes, famous 17th century philosopher said, (I think tongue-in-cheek), “Good sense is of all things in the world the most equally distributed, for everyone thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that even those most difficult to please in all other matters do not commonly desire more of it than they already possess.”

I hope all of this is enlightening to voters.  Finally, we all have something in common, liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, it matters not when we’re all being conned.  These members of the ruling class conspire with each other to get what they want while convincing their constituents they are fighting the good fight when in reality they are simply pretending to make changes while feathering their own nests.

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote this about the US in the 1800’s, “In the United States . . . the pursuit of wealth generally diverts men of great talents and strong passions from the pursuit of [political] power; and it frequently happens that a man does not undertake to direct the fortunes of the state until he has shown himself incompetent to conduct his own. The vast number of very ordinary men who occupy public stations is quite as attributable to these causes as to the bad choice of democracy.”

One candidate has shown the “great talent and strong passion..” in the private sector.  Perhaps now, in public office, his final chapter is to set about the task of making America great once again, but is that what America wants?

This presidential election is being conducted on opposite ends of a scale that will tell us all whether or not the United States will embark upon a journey that celebrates who we are and where we came from, building on that glorious legacy, or if we will transform our nation into the homogeneous fabric of sameness and conformity so much of the world embraces today.

The vividness of the contrast is dizzying and the sad reality is that likely less than 7 in 10 eligible voters will decide the country’s fate.  Famed French philosopher Joseph de Maistre said, “Every country has the government it deserves.”

What do we deserve?