ASSOCIATED PRESS

Presidential elections aren't guaranteed to be fun, ennobling or grand, but they are supposed to somehow, in the end, reaffirm what's best about America. You know the tropes: pageant of democracy, solemn act of self-government, silent temple of the polling place -- all THAT.

Well, not this year. So far, 2016 is democracy as if depicted by Hieronymus Bosch: a dark, grotesque landscape that is almost entirely the creation of the raw rhetoric and rallies of one candidate, Donald Trump.

Mean-spirited cruelty and social unrest is nothing new in America politics, but it has been many years (Barry Goldwater in 1964) since a candidate's behavior has brought forth analogies to the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Not to excuse Trump in any way, but we are at the point of invoking Godwin's Law, which states that any argument (in an election) has reached the point of uselessness when one side is accusing the other of Nazi thinking.

Trump by himself is enough to make us terminally depressed about the election season and even the fate of the country, if not the world. He is a one-man listicle of lost hope. But our duty here at First To Last is to provide our many loyal readers with a list each week. So here is our list of the 12 most depressing realities about the 2016 campaign:

RANK REASON Photos: Getty, Associated Press