One word can tell a complete story. I found one that tells the story of this election cycle. The word is “inured.” Its definition? “Able to withstand hardship; to become accustomed to something unpleasant by prolonged exposure.”

By my reckoning the nation’s prolonged exposure to this unpleasantness began when when Ted Cruz became the first to toss his dogma and Eddie Munster face into the ring on March 23, 2015. Hillary Clinton and her emails made the inevitable entry a few weeks later on April 12, 18 days before Bernie Sanders, who seemed at the time, like a gnat the Clinton machine would zap, but didn’t realize Sanders and his followers had already bathed themselves in bullshit repellant.

 

For the sake of brevity, and to get to the point, it was another two months before Donald Trump sized up the field and took the race for the nation’s highest office to its current depths by riding the down escalator at the gaudy Trump Tower and announcing his intentions to Make America Great again by eventually revealing he has studly equipment, presumably to screw us all. 

Other candidates have come and gone and some, like Marco Rubio, are hanging in because, in his case, campaigning is apparently more fun than suffering through those onerous debates and votes in the Senate chambers. In other words, looking for a new job instead of doing the job for which he’s already been elected. Plus, at campaign events they have free food and often some children, making him feel, temporarily, like a tall person and who, incidentally, have small hands.

As a nation we have indeed inured, suffering through this traveling circus featuring a shrinking cast of clowns where both the donkeys and elephants are acting like asses. I look forward to the nominating conventions which will be each party’s Big Top in their race to the bottom. If they were held today, given the delegate totals, it would be Trump vs. Hillary for the big prize. That’s almost as depressing as binge-watching episodes of “Duck Dynasty.”

But we’re strong. We will endure, as we continue to inure, becoming all too accustomed to this prolonged unpleasantness, which, incidentally, we would never give up, as it’s merely the downside of democracy.