Thankfully, a dispiriting election season in the United States is almost over. France and Germany await their ordeals. Democracies have been battered by the Great Recession, triggered by the greed of financial institutions and abetted by weak governmental regulations. Fears of displacement and loss have been fueled by the influx of foreign workers and the advent of multiculturalism. The public is fed up with electoral politics that rewards those with deep pockets while tossing bromides to those struggling to make ends meet. “Trickle-down economics” hasn’t trickled, while refugees from war-torn regions stream westward and northward in search of shelter.

These unsettling conditions have produced Donald Trump as the Republican Party’s standard-bearer. Trump reminds me of Frank Muir’s well-read children’s book, What-a-Mess, painfully re-scripted into a shambling presidential campaign. The U.S. political process is reeling in Trump’s toxic wake, and won’t be cleaned up anytime soon.

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