(This is the second part of an ongoing series. To read part one, click here.)

The 2016 election race was unique in many ways, but specifically because it featured two prominent outsiders from opposite ends of the political spectrum; Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Although I didn’t completely agree with Sanders on the economic front, I felt like his brand of social awareness and economic justice was something America needed. I discussed Sanders’ positions and policies at length with many of my Canadian and American friends, and we were almost in unanimous agreement that Sanders’ way was the right path for the US, and by default the rest of the world, to travel. He would have been a disaster in Canada or any of the more socialist leaning countries, but in the United States where corporatism so frequently masquerades as democracy, a few doses of Sanders’ style of socialism would have provided a welcome, if not temporary, relief from the constant bloodsucking of its citizens.

Surprisingly, most of my more conservative friends and family members were throwing their support behind Sanders as well. After sixteen years of war and two administrations so beholden to special interests they would make Soviet Union oligarchs uncomfortable, they too were tired of the usual political routine. The message was clear; the American people had carried the burden of multiple wars and an economic collapse on their backs and they were ready for a change. Their tax dollars had paid for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an expansion of war into the surrounding countries, drone strikes that equated to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of civilian deaths and a Wall Street bailout. Maybe now it was time to focus some of that attention on helping each other and the world at large rather than destroying it.

But the Democrats wanted Hillary Clinton and they were determined to give her the nomination by any means necessary. They colluded and conspired against Bernie Sanders, and manipulated liberal voters until they sunk his campaign. The push against Sanders was so blatant it was reminiscent of Henry Wallace’s bid for reelection as Vice President in 1944 (actually, there are a lot of commonalities between the circumstances surrounding and the political positions of Henry Wallace and Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton and Harry Truman but I will save those for a later article).

With Bernie Sanders out of the way and Hillary Clinton securing the Democratic nomination, it felt like the air was let out of whatever momentum had built around the Democrats. Clinton- a woman deeply entrenched in the American political system with a long history of controversy and scandal dating all the way back to the 1970’s- was not a candidate for broad, sweeping change, rather, she represented the same special interests the world has come to loathe.

As a result, many of my conservative leaning, and even some of my more centrist and liberal friends and family, began looking towards the right for a candidate they could get behind. But the Republicans weren’t offering up much either- it was the usual mixed bag of D-list villains. Across the board they looked like Legion of Doom flunkies; a bunch of losers who aspired to be Charles Manson but were destined to be the mid-afternoon intruder who breaks into your house and sniffs your underwear while you’re at work.

And then there was Trump; the obnoxious billionaire real estate sheister determined to make America great again. After years of bouncing between a number of political affiliations he had snuck in the back door and found a home with the Republicans.

At first nobody on the right or left took him seriously. Trump was a sideshow in 2016 just as he was in 2012 and the years before. Surely the Republicans would nominate Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, or even Rand Paul. At one point they had a total of seventeen potential candidates all in the running for the nomination- how could they possibly not find somebody qualified enough to be a whipping boy for the Clinton campaign?

The answer was, they couldn’t. Of all the sharks swimming around in the vast GOP ocean, they put up sixteen of their weakest and most confused jellyfish to run against the greatest, whitest shark in the Democratic depths. They would not survive and they knew it. They needed an even bigger, more profane and vile shark than the one offered up by the DNC and they found him in candidate number seventeen: Donald Trump.

It seemed like some kind of backwards miracle that Trump pulled away from the rotting heap of Republican corpses like he did. Week after week we all looked around at each other dumbfounded as his campaign gained steam. He spouted off whatever insane ideas popped into his giant orange head and the media zeroed in on him like flies swarming around a fresh pile of shit. The crazier his theories became, the tighter the media focused until they merged into one unstoppable monster.

Trump was a master at this sort of promotion. He appealed to the lowest common denominator and he knew how to work them into a frenzy. He blamed Mexico, liberals, conservatives, Obama, immigrants, Islam, ISIS- everybody but the American people for their own problems and they ate it up. Everywhere he went he drew larger and larger crowds- made up mostly of disenfranchised middle and lower class white people who felt left out of the new progressive America.

In response to this, the left became more extreme and pushed back even harder. Identity politics became the driving force behind their agenda and they skewered anyone who didn’t view Trump as the ultimate enemy. They called for censorship on social media, attacked any public figure who may not have necessarily supported Trump but didn’t vocalize support for Clinton, and purposely altered facts- further muddying the waters of an already murky online information stream.

Meanwhile, the rational members of society stood back and watched it all in amazement. On one side we had a reality show star who had a clear lack of awareness in regards to any of the important social or political issues, and on the other side a rabid mob of neoliberals thrusting a sociopath towards the White House while trying to sell her as the new progressive Virgin Mary- despite an on again, off again FBI investigation into a private email server located in her home.

Then the DNC email hack hit the internet and all hell broke loose. Although Russia would later be implicated in the hack in a roundabout, circumstantial evidence type of way, it’s also important to note that John Podesta- the chairman of Clinton’s presidential campaign- had given away his email information in a phishing scam in the months prior. His username was his name and his password was “password”- seriously, you can’t make this stuff up (Abby Martin did a fantastic piece on John Podesta that you can watch by clicking here).

What the emails revealed were the inner workings of a presidential campaign for a candidate who was a liar at best, and a puppet for special interests at worst. All of our darkest fears about Hillary Clinton had been confirmed- we had long suspected her and the Clinton Foundation of shady practices and now we had the proof. Clinton wasn’t a feminist icon as the left had positioned her, she was just another dishonest politician working to make herself and her wealthy friends even wealthier.

But the liberal media didn’t see it that way- at least, that’s not the way they reported it. They drew up “in-depth investigative reports” as a way of breaking down all of the “hard hitting” facts in an effort to divert the American people, and the global population, from searching through the Wikileaks database themselves and discovering the truth. However, despite their best efforts, the Clinton ship was sinking fast and was taking on more water than the left could throw overboard. For the first time ever during a presidential campaign, information was being shared and it could no longer be glossed over as hearsay or conjecture; it was right there for all of us to read in the words of Clinton and her campaign managers themselves.

At this point, the logical or perhaps even right thing for the Democrats to do would have been to abandon the Hillary ship and replace her with Bernie Sanders. It would have seemed crazy to switch candidates this late in the race, but this was a circumstance never before seen at such a high level of American politics. Desperate times called for desperate measures and the DNC’s plan to subvert Sanders had gone terribly wrong. They needed to abort mission and hit the reset button immediately.

But instead they pressed on and doubled down with endorsements from celebrities like Beyonce, Jay-Z and Robert De Niro. Hollywood and the liberal media echoed the slogan “I’m with her” and painted a picture of the dystopian, bigoted society that would emerge if Donald Trump were to become leader of the free world. The strategy was no longer to campaign on the issues, it was to debate when necessary then patiently wait for Trump to self-destruct.

As Trump inched closer to Election Day, it seemed as if that’s what he was trying to do. His claims became even more outrageous than they had in the past and when confronted about them in the news media, he pretended like he had never said them at all. It was like he was trying to say, “CAN’T YOU GUYS SEE I’M FUCKING CRAZY! I DON’T WANT THIS JOB! THIS WHOLE THING HAS GONE TOO FAR!” but the louder he screamed, the more the crowds roared and muted his insanity.

Meanwhile the left began to eat itself. They protested and rallied, but their cries were falling on deaf ears. In the months leading up to November, the once united liberal front began to splinter and descend into chaos. They had manipulated truth to such a degree and so often that they themselves were now lost in the muddy waters they helped to create. They protested everything from minor acts of perceived prejudice to university professors who refused to acknowledge unnecessary gender pronouns. Virtually every ugly aspect of life- no matter how big or small- was call for a rally complete with safe spaces and trigger warnings. They were chasing ghosts while Trump was running away with their country, and before they knew it, he had won the election.

Click here to read part three