An Ontological Election

For the first time in my life, a presidential election is taking place in which the conflict of constituencies has moved from one to three theaters

In every other elections, from Eisenhower / Stevenson to Obama / Romney, the conflict has been at the level of policy, with some modest dirty tricks and questionable voting thrown into the mix.

Nixon brought dirty tricks to new heights and from 1992 on conservatives in general and Republicans in particular began laying the groundwork for the international embarrassment of an election we are having this year.

The 2016 election jumped the rails of normality almost the moment that Donald Trump entered the race.

With his skill at playing the media he went from a joke to the Republican presidential nominee beating a large field of Republican candidates who, for the most part and however much I might disagree with them on policy, would be a competent Commander in Chief.

By the time Trump was nominated, the question was no longer between good policy and bad policy, but between solid if flawed competence and dangerous incompetence at the level of knowledge, experience, and temperament.

Now, in the home stretch, it has become clear that the battle occurs on a third plane: reality itself.

The election pits an understanding of reality that most of us began learning in grade school. A reality that finds the deductive logic of mathematics and the inductive logic of empiricism and the sciences persuasive. A reality in which facts both exist and matter. A reality that produces artifacts such as Scientific American, the Washington Post, the New England Journal of Medicine, etc.

Against that, we have a reality the produces artifacts such as The Drudge Report, Breitbart, and InfoWars. Or maybe, it's more accurate to say those artifacts have created the reality rather than the other way around.

This election is more than just a decision about the nature of America.

It is about the nature of reality itself.