# COUNTRY SQUIRE MAGAZINE " Feed COUNTRY SQUIRE MAGAZINE " Comments Feed alternate alternate alternate Skip to content * Facebook * Twitter * Instagram * Reddit COUNTRY SQUIRE MAGAZINE A Leading Platform for Voices from the Overlooked Great British Countryside ( BUTTON ) Primary Menu * Home * Opinion * Politics * Interviews * Reviews * Art * About * CSM Writers * Contact ( BUTTON ) Search Search for : Search Opinion , Politics Nervous Breakdown USA ? BY JAMIE FOSTER Sitting in the South West of England , where the pilgrim fathers set off from in the hope of a new world and the freedom and opportunity it promised , I can only manage a wry smile when I think of where it led them . This land of the free and home of the brave ; this country that produced Lincoln , Washington and Reagan . Has it really come to this ? An orange billionaire snake oil salesmen and a cut price Lady Macbeth fighting it out for the White House ? What has happened America ? I believe that this election is the inevitable result of a number of factors that could only have led to this outcome . Firstly , the pretence that a Monarch can be routinely elected was bound to end in disaster . In this country our monarchy has divested itself of power and concentrated on duty . Our Queen embodies her subjects . She is a figure head and a source of inspiration . We do not ask her to make our decisions for us . In the US the power invested in the presidency was always likely to attract those to whom power should never be given . Secondly , and growing out of the first wrong decision , is the hideous spectre of untrammelled power for sale . Presidencies cost ; they are not the free will of the people expressed in the ballot box . They come at an enormous price . Hillary Clinton ’ s 2016 presidential campaign has so far raised $ 1.3 Bn . Trump ’ s a mere $ 795M . At those heady prices meritocracy is unattainable . To anyone who asks how a country of nearly 320 million people produced these two extraordinarily awful final candidates the answer is simple . They were the ones with the cash . The third factor is trickier , and it relates to the American dream . Clearly part of this is the promise that with hard work and genuine talent anyone can succeed . It is also the acceptance by those who don ’ t succeed despite their hard work and genuine talent that the game wasn ’ t fixed . America ’ s strength was in enabling the individual to attain the greatest heights . Such heights can only be reached by the acquiescence of one ’ s fellows allowing the star seeker to climb the pyramid they have built by standing on each other ’ s shoulders . Their reward for their stalwart stoicism was the promise that those they lifted up would bring back the stars and that everyone could have a piece . The industrial decline and rise in middle class poverty gave the lie to that promise . So where are we now ? Bernie Sanders and his offer of trying the same thing that repeatedly hadn ’ t worked since Karl Marx first suggested it attracted some support from the easily led . The real money , however , is on two people who both simultaneously personify and betray aspects of the American dream . Hillary wore the mantle of the possibility that a woman could be President . She held the candle for the idea that the democrats held the moral high ground from the protectors of wealth and privilege in the Grand Old Party . She was the good mother the country needed . The dawning realisation that she is more likely to be a wicked stepmother is truly painful . Trump , on the other hand , bizarrely rose up as the candidate for the Springsteen voter . The entitled son of a millionaire property developer became the voice of Jack and Dianne . It was a voice that he never sounded natural using , but a voice born of rage and alienation which was screaming so loudly it didn ’ t notice the oddly fragile creature it was emerging from . This then is the choice on November the 8 ^ th . Will America choose an elitist , cold pathological liar as its first woman president ; or a germaphobe whose first car was a limousine to be the voice of the working man ? Makes me glad to live in Devon I can tell you . 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