The Best Words To Describe Election 2016

What’s the first word that comes to mind when you think of this election? Without self-censorship, old school brainstorm-style?

Mine was “dumpster fire.” It’s been bouncing around on Twitter for months now, and there’s something gratifying about the tri-syllabic description. The visual is graphic, complete with the rare smell factor, plus there’s nothing redeeming about a heap of garbage blazing in a giant metal cube.

But like most middle school students, the first response in a free-style brainstorm isn’t usually the greatest. You’re told to come up with ideas to solve world hunger and you immediately scribble “giant alien peach trees.” Sure, starving people would take a peach over nothing. But the execution of extraterrestrial horticulture alone makes this plan a non-starter.

Writing on then, “disappointing” comes to mind. It’s less visual than “dumpster fire,” but more useful, and more accurate. A majority of voters describe themselves as such, “frustrated” and “disgusted” with 2016.

Maybe that would be enough, but let’s say this hypothetical brainstorm is a timed one, and you have to write on until one minute is up. What comes next?

How about “selfish?”

Not to describe the inanimate entity that is a campaign and election process. But “selfish” as a way to characterize both major party nominees.

What else better conveys the choice to go forward with your campaign, when you refuse to release your taxes, refuse to learn real foreign policy, and have a past littered with misogyny, bigotry, and petty cruelty? Why else would you drag “your” party into the mud, knowing you were the one candidate who would probably lose to your opponent?

The only possible answer is that you’re best described as a “selfish” person.

And what else better sums up the decision to run for office, despite being the subject of an FBI investigation, despite having questionable ties to tyrannical foreign regimes, and moving blithely forward without regard to the integrity of the primary nomination process? Why else would you risk the legacy of the current president, carrying a load of baggage better described as a cargo freight?

The only possible answer is that you’re best described as a “selfish” person.

I do not believe there is an equivalence between Clinton and Trump. One is corrupt, the other is corrupt and proudly ignorant. One obfuscates, the other obfuscates with or without rationale. One tweets; the other tweets incoherently at 3:00 AM.

But in the realm of selfishness, the two are indistinguishable. Both have put the success of their purported goals in great peril by remaining at the top of the ticket. Both have risked the implementation of their party’s platforms by insisting they be the proverbial head of that party.

If Donald Trump cared one iota about Republican ideas, he would step down.

If Hillary Clinton were committed to Democratic policies, she would step down.

If either of them cared about the health of democracy in this country, they would remove themselves from the ballot, and allow a less-sullied, better-suited candidate to take their place.

They would recognize Americans want someone to vote for, not just someone to vote against.

They would care more about the well-being of this nation than the advancement of their own private goals.

Americans know this consciously, or sense it at a gut level. They get that politics is dirty, and campaigns get ugly, but they’re usually given a choice between two more-or-less competent and pretty upstanding options. It’s not lost on them that anyone else who said a fraction of the things uttered by Trump would have been thrown out in years past. It’s not a question that anyone else under FBI investigation would never have gotten anywhere near the Democratic nomination.

So the best word for this election may not be “selfish.”

It might be something closer to “tragedy.”

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