Donal Trump is showing us how not to be Stupid

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We have to take a good hard look at ourselves.

Just repeating the mantra that everyone other than ourselves is stupid clicks with (unfortunately) the sort of people with whom we have very little in common.  We want to connect with people who will help us solve the problems that we face now, and will face shortly.  We can't be choosy about who's going to help us.

Trump might not be an idiot, but this constant ranting does tend to suggest that his best days are behind him.  Unless he is brilliant, and is implementing a Machiavellian scheme to convince the nation that he is stupid and harmless, he really is stupid and harmless (there I go, doing exactly what Trump himself is doing).  So he keeps us guessing whether his silliness is a brilliant smokescreen, or genuine silliness from the essence of Trump.  I vote for the latter.

On the other side of the coin, it is time we stopped poking fun at the GOP, and took stock of how we should proceed.  Sanders and Clinton have set an excellent example in the debates: they declined to indulge in mudslinging (though they were not reticent about criticizing each other on substantive issues, even if the actual words they used were carefully calculated), and it is time we stopped simply grumbling, and made concrete suggestions which conservatives can support, even if unwillingly.  If there is one criticism of Bernie Sanders, it is that he seems to have turned his back on compromise.  This is understandable, because the GOP, at least, seems to be uninterested in compromise.  John Boehner's resignation seems to suggest that he had decided that non-compromise had been taken as far as it could.

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