Indeed, the current White House occupant is much louder and more annoyingly abrasive with some bizarre one-off impulses vs the usual occupants, but it's now clear that over the last ~30 years, career politicians, corporate vested interests, lobbyists and the administrative state have increasingly subverted the two-party duopoly into pure political theater.

It's a little sad that Trump is such a divisive train-wreck spectacle that many haven't noticed that Clinton, Obama and Biden were achieving many of the same outcomes as Bush/Trump, just more smoothly and with more appealing rationalizations.

The best thing about Trump is that he's such an obvious self-interested kleptocrat and he doesn't even care to hide it (in fact, he seems to enjoy flaunting it). But is it really that much better to be sold out by a more likeable persona who seems like part of our tribe and has the skills to mask the long con more deftly? I guess maybe at least then we won't notice as much or feel as bad about the same outcome?