24th October 2016, 11:29 AM
While Trump's campaign didn't bring up anything particularly important by itself, the way it was waged is historically insane. I have no reason to expect the next election cycle, post-Trump, will be better than this one. It may be worse. Trump opened up the bottle, and I don't know that the racist orange genie will ever go back in. Politicians have seen the effectiveness of completely insane claims with zero basis in ANYONE'S understanding of a candidate work so long as the one making it has complete 100% confidence to the level of acting as though everyone already knew that "fact" before they said it. There's no backing away from that. That's going to be how the next campaign is run, and they're going to look for the candidates narcissistic enough to make those claims sound like established fact. Well, that's my fear.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)