posted on november 4, 2016 by charles hugh smith 




the overwhelming consensus of the punditry across the political spectrum is that <u+201c>nothing good can come of this election<u+201d><u+2013>and that<u+2019>s a very good thing. the handwringing goes like this: the country is deeply divided by schisms that cannot be bridged, every institution from the two parties to the mainstream media to the department of justice has been tarnished by cover-ups, collusion or worse; whomever wins the election will enter the presidency without a mandate, and so on. 




why is <u+201c>nothing good can come of this<u+201d> good? because ridding the nation of its political corruption will require hitting bottom. 




just as an alcoholic or drug addict is incapable of making any truly positive changes until he/she hits absolute bottom, so it is with our tolerance of a corrupt political system that is poisoning the nation, one injection of corrupt cash, collusion and pay-to-play at a time. 




if our rotten-to-the-core politics as usual is indeed flying off the cliff to complete destruction, that is an unalloyed good. 




just as alcoholics continue down their self-destructive path with the aid of enablers, so too has the corrupt political order expanded with the aid of the mainstream media, insiders in the department of justice, k street lobbyists and a veritable army of well-paid lackeys, pundits, academics, apparatchiks and assorted toadies in the organs of governance and in the big-money private sector and philanthro-capitalist dynasties of pay-to-play foundations. 




the only way anything will truly change in the political order is if every establishment insider politico loses every election, from the presidency to dogcatcher. nothing will change until the mere existence of a private foundation like the clinton foundation triggers a landslide loss for the politico with ties to such corruption. 




nothing will change until the collusion of the mainstream media (supplying the insider candidate with debate questions, etc.) alone causes the colluding candidate to lose by a landslide. 




nothing will change until candidates who refuse to accept any donation larger than $100 from anyone or any entity beat the goldman sachs/saudi prince-funded insider candidates by a landslide. 




nothing will change until candidates who fund costly negative tv advertising campaigns with millions in pay-to-play <u+201c>contributions<u+201d> from goldman sachs et al. lose by a landslide. 




you get the point: we the citizens and voters have to stop being enablers of systemic corruption. we have to stop being bamboozled by insiders with promises of <u+201c>hope and change<u+201d> and the usual negative tv blitzes funded by corrupt big money. 




it<u+2019>s easy to blame lax campaign laws or the corrupted candidates and their insider toadies, but ultimately we<u+2019>re responsible for enabling corruption, collusion, pay-for-play and a political and financial elite that<u+2019>s above the law. 




from the point of view of the corrupted, colluding insiders, msm flunkies, department of justice lackeys and well-paid parrot-pundits, nothing good can come from this election because half the voters may actually cast off the shackles of the nation<u+2019>s corrupt and corrupting political and financial elites. 




this mass rejection of the politics as usual of corrupt and corrupting political and financial elites is the highest possible good <u+2013>a public good that eludes the hand-wringing corrupt insiders, pundits and toadies who have sucked up fortunes from the trough of putrid systemic corruption.
<u+201c>nothing good can come of this election<u+201d><u+2013>and that<u+2019>s good
charles hugh smith