The situation

I am thoroughly weary, not to say exasperated by this horrendous election season. Can I bill one or both of the candidates for my psychiatrist's services? ·Actually I don't have a shrink, but may be forced to take that step.

Anyway, here are my thoughts. In all likelihood Hillary will just squeak by, though with not enough of a majority to qualify for the conventional accolade of a mandate. That means that she will only succeed when her values happen to coincide with those of the Republicans. If this means prison reform, fine (though I am skeptical).

More certainly it means a muscular foreign policy, where Hillary will not be as hawkish as the Republicans, but hawkish enough to authorize unwise military adventures in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Longterm, however, the greatest danger is the Democratic embrace of identitarian politics. She is not bringing us together as she claims, but consolidating our apartness by building a potentially fissiparous coalition of blacks, Hispanics, progressive women, LGBT people, and elite whites.

In this context it is regrettably inevitable that nonellite whites will organize under the own identity banner - as they are in fact doing. Crying "racism" will not impede this consolidation, as the consolidators do not care.

We will thus approach the condition of the old Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires - destined in all likelihood to fail. I look upon this prospect with fatalistic resignation. After all, few empires last much more than 200 years. Our time is running out.