... which is the overall problem with this election season in general. I don't recall a time in my life where things were this polarized, and the rhetoric on both sides was as vitriolic and extreme.

I think it's easy to blame the candidates (Trump has, whether he intended to or not, created a movement that shares a lot of tenants with White Nationalism and made some statements supporting violence towards opposition protesters), however I think the ugliness we're seeing isn't because of the candidates as much as it is the state of the people.

I made a point the other day about how both the dyed in the wool Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters share more than a few common demographic categories, and that they're both just fucking awful groups of people because of the high level of aggression both exhibit.

People who are Sanders supporters unequivocally call Trump supporters "Nazis" and thus anything you do to them is justified. Trump supporters call Sanders supporters Communists and so anything they can do to them is justified. Everyone is calling everyone else "evil" which is the best way to ensure you never have to look at their perspective at all.

What I hope is that what we see at Trump rallies (both from those attending to support and those who attend to disrupt/provoke) are just indicative of the extremes of the political fringe on both sides and the rest of us, the majority, are kind of horrified that these are our fellow citizens.

This isn't political discourse any more; it's warfare.

Full Disclosure: I consider myself aligned more with Sanders' policies, and would vote for him in the general. I don't agree with the tactics used by his most ardent supporters or their "method" of reaching out to the Black Community ("hey, you like free stuff and weed, why are you voting for Hillary?").

I also think Donald Trump is a demagogue to a large swath of the worst kind of citizens we have: people who only give a fuck about their level of comfort and happiness combined with a level of "I've-Got-Mine" apathy that's just bad for the country as a whole. I don't think he, personally, is a Nazi (Mussolini fits better than Hitler), but I think that his policies are in line with people who wish they were Nazis.