> Oh give me a break. People like Trump and Clinton are the creme de la creme of deranged narcissistic sociopaths—part of the reason why they have gotten “so far”.
Wait, you can both be right!
The main thing is there's always a ruthless fight to get to the very top of (civilized/hierarchical/capitalist/whatever) society. But when the people doing that fighting can put an honest and democratic face to it, they will cause mid-level folks to behave better and oppositely, when the fighting gets out-of-hand, those on lower levels with aspirations start thinking they can use "bad" behaviors to attain them.
Yeah! Like when pre-Trump the norm was that all powerful and well-known people were magnanimous, self-sacrificing, and good people that the “mid-level” and below looked up to. But after Trump (grunts) that just changed on a dime.
Except the opposite of that.
I mean, the bodies that piled up around Clinton were being noticed at the time. That you had a potential presidential sequence of Bush, Clinton and Bush and Clinton had a pretty 3rd world kind of feeling. Trump ran as "the corrupt guy who take on corruption 'cause he's honest". Still, contrary to your claim, Trump launched the career of a whole new horde of grifters, with the Qanon types as just the most visible examples.