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“Hitler is made by us,” Martha Graham said in 1942. “He is all our carelessness, our lack of civil responsibility. . . that is what makes him so horrible.” I quoted this in my WSJ review of Mark Franko’s Martha Graham in Love and War back in 2012. I’ve thought about it ever since.

And just as certainly, Trump too was made by us, made with our tacit permission and enabling.

We have tolerated our cultural degradation, our “mainstream” media turning into slavering celebrity scandal sheet, thus legitimizing the likes of Donald Trump.

We have allowed the rise of the “new” Democrats, and their old, old regressive ideology of give to the rich and fuck-all to everybody else, as well as their perverse new methodology of coddling the Republicans. The Dems’ former-opposition has thus been emboldened to turn into what they are now: a radical anti-democracy front.

We American citizens have permitted civics to be deleted from the national curriculum. We have allowed the country to space out into a democracy-averse electorate much of which pays no attention whatsoever to politics and clocks in some of the world’s lowest turnout rates.

No, Democratic  establishment, it was not simply backlash against racial, religious, and sexual equality. A lot of white men who voted for Obama now voted for Trump.

And yes, Hillary, curing grotesque economic inequality will do a lot to ameliorate racism and sexism.

Bernie Sanders, who would have been about to inherit the Oval office had he not been sandbagged by the Dem establishment, explains it to that willfully obtuse, pathetic excuse for a leadership:

“Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media. . . . People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids – all while the very rich become much richer.”

It’s Bernie Sanders’ Democratic party now. The corporatist right-wing Dem leadership has led the party to one catastrophic defeat after another. The Clinton-Obama axis of triangulation must be politely escorted to the political wilderness, and their restructuring of the party as a twin sorority to the GOP must be undone. Otherwise, when the freaky GOP repeals Obama care in January, the Dems will find a way to make the public blame it instead on them. They’re hapless, inept, barely recognizable as graduates of Politics 101.

A friend in Italy SCHIPed early this morning: “WTF !!!! 20years later America has another Berlusconi !!!!”

Thomas Frank in The Guardian assigns blame where it to a great deal belong.

“What species of cluelessness guided our Democratic leaders as they went about losing what they told us was the most important election of our lifetimes? . . . .Democratic leaders made Hillary their candidate even though they knew about her closeness to the banks, her fondness for war, and her unique vulnerability on the trade issue – each of which Trump exploited to the fullest. . . . To try to put over such a nominee while screaming that the Republican is a rightwing monster is to court disbelief. If Trump is a fascist, as liberals often said, Democrats should have put in their strongest player to stop him, not a party hack they’d chosen because it was her turn.”

I’m reading Bill Press’s Buyer’s Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down. After just finishing Chapter 1, “Budget Battles and the Obama Economy,” tonight’s fiasco seems all the more inevitable. Obama’s failure to relieve the plight of America’s working people, his cozening of the same Wall Street execs who had caused the financial crisis, his endless capitulations to the Republicans, all created a perfect storm. Too many people would have seen Clinton as more of the same, and too many millions in this country had been written off for too long by both parties–making them vulnerable to the sham appeal of a pseudo-outsider. And making them vulnerable to the hideous racial, sexual, and religious scapegoating of a demagogue like Trump.

Then, of course, there are the outright improprieties committed by the Republicans–hello, James Comey and Jason Chaffetz! Once Obama whiffed on that Supreme Court seat, the GOP knew it could get away with anything.

I certainly hope Hillary wins, but at one a.m. that seems unlikely. The only positive upshot I can imagine from all this is that finally. belatedly, the Clinton epoch of triangulation will have to come to an end. Democrats must again learn what it means to be an opposition party. The country, however, may not survive long enough to make that turnaround mean something. We will be run by a madman, steering the country off a cliff.

“Is America a failed state and society?” Paul Krugman asks. “It looks truly possible.”

But why, Dr. K, were you so dismissive of Sanders and so uncritical a booster of Hillary?

Sanders and his supporters are now completely vindicated. They warned us.

That’s why their suing in Nevada, to prevent polling places from doing what they’re legally enjoined with doing: staying open until everyone who arrived before closing time gets a chance to vote.

Be prepared for weeks of GOP election-contesting.

As you’re standing in line (and standing in line) at the polls, and presuming you have some interest in the art and interpersonals at New York City Ballet in the 1960s, turn to the current Fall 2016 Ballet Review and read my Conversation with John Prinz.

At age eighty-nine, Harry Belafonte in The New York Times sums up the Trump dystopia in a uniquely imaginative way.  And it’s interesting, in a debased American political scene in which art and aesthetics must never be mentioned lest it bring out accusations of “elitism,” this great artist and activist dares to mention the “lifeless, anonymous buildings” that Trump constructs.

The Trump non-assassination-attempt charade is another stunt lifted from the Fascist playbook and a preview of how he would end democracy in this country.  Stage one provocative incident after other, then declare martial law because of the alleged threat to him and the country–he would be sure to identify them as one and the same.