So I got stoned and ended up watching the debate …

I had a fresh buzz on, realized it was time to eat and was just about to sit down with it when I remembered … the debate. It was just starting and I only intended on giving it a few minutes.

I finished supper and was working on a beer, when I started getting into it. I’d never watched Trump in real time before, and the guy is hypnotizing.

I found myself hanging on his every word – and there are a lot of them. I could roll right along with what he was saying. Not only that, it all made perfect sense. There was a feeling of synchronicity between the presenter and the listener, not wholly unlike what you find in an energetic African American church … or a klan rally right before they light the cross.

I understood, and I realized why so many people follow him. He’s a mutated beatnik, all stream of consciousness from a person lacking in a consciousness, the flip side of Rod McKuen amped up on PCP, money, power and hate.

As he started losing more and more of his filters I realized where I’d heard this before. Back in high school, stoner circles – people passing the joint around and talking with that first rush of highness. For those too young to remember, think That Seventies Show. There’s always one guy who gets all worked up and begins to hog the conversation, hypnotizing the others as he rattles off a litany of things that are done wrong, offering simple, common sense solutions to how they should be fixed.

You had to listen to him because usually it was the guy who brought the dope. Listening to Trump, I saw where his roots lie, and I realized he does make perfect sense, is as right as anyone else, even if I don’t agree with his conclusions. I could see why voting for him could be the right choice.

Then I remembered. I was stoned.

You see, I’ve been that guy rattling on and on about some issue in the stoner circle, and remembered it inevitably ends up with the realization that one of the basic pillars of your whole theory is completely wrong. The whole argument collapses like a house of cards and you get roundly berated for being such a dumbass.

With that in mind it was easy to see that Trump’s entire philosophy is rooted on very shaky ground. Kernels of truth become barrels of bullshit which he then exports to anyone willing to listen. He was the guy you never trusted … with your girlfriend, to loan money to, to smoke dope with even. You knew if pressed he’d sell your ass out to save his own.

I’m not one of those people who think Trump was on coke at the debate. The guy doesn’t even drink, and what dealer do you know who would sell to him? Trump is stoned on adulation.

I’ve seen this movie, countless time. The teenagers have snuck into the creepy old house, they’re sitting on the dusty floor drinking beer, passing around joints and a bottle. Trump is the preppy prick, he brought Hillary, a cheerleader and Chris Christie. The cheerleader gets blind drunk very fast and Christie is taking advantage of the situation and gets his throat cut post coital. The naked cheerleader comes shrieking through the room with Christy’s head rolling into the room behind her.

Oddly enough, that’s not far from what the debate was like.

So they’re debating what to do next, and it comes down to an argument between Donald and Hillary, who is starting to assert herself and we all see Trump as the frat boy prick that he is. The guys are all for following Trump’s plan and you can see the young Hillary’s eyes meet a young Bill Clinton’s and you know before the night is over, they’ll be together and the others will be mutilated.

That’s when I realize this movie is missing someone. It’s missing the bookish nerd, the stoner who explains to the others , including the audience,what is happening. He’s the guy who you’ll think dies near the conclusion, but pops up at the end to save the day. The guy who exposes the weakness in the beast and shows Hillary how to kill it.

He’s the guy everyone likes, but nobody knows all that well, and all are sure he’s a bit cracked. But he’s the social conscious of the group, the guy who can remember what everyone was like before life started feeding them bullshit and anger. He’s the guy that can remind them of the better half of themselves. He can appeal to their heart as well as their head.

And yes, he can be a woman as well. But Hillary isn’t her.

In the eighties at least, the film would end with Hillary on top, the beast beaten but sure to return in the sequel. But it’s a new world of cinema, and quite often there are no winners. Apocalypse and hordes of roaming zombies are the norm now.

The reason Clinton could lose isn’t so much because of her, but because people aren’t voting with their head, they’re voting with their heart. On both sides. I see liberals espousing logical reasons why Trump sucks, and he does. Yet people aren’t voting for him through logic, but through passion. If you want to change people’s minds in this race, you have to change their hearts.

You don’t do that by berating the other side as a bunch of brain dead rednecks. Isn’t that the same reasoning Clinton uses when saying Clump, er, Trump is giving aid to Isis? If she’s right about that, then every time you insult the other side, like I have been here, you’re adding more fuel to their fire.

By the end, Trump was tired and beaten. You could see it in his frustration. You could see it as his streams of consciousness started flowing back into themselves and tying him up in knots … pretzel logic. You could see it when in the time most candidates sum up why we should vote for them, he was taking a swing at Rosie O’Donnell … “things they just get uglier and I have no sense of time.”

Donald Trump is no fascist. He’s a celebrity. He doesn’t have followers, he has fanatics. Fans turn on their heroes, just ask Michael Jackson or Justin Bieber. All it takes is pissing off your fan base, and Trump can piss people off in his sleep. It’ll happen inevitably, and if he’s president when it happens, it won’t be pretty.

Our electoral process has degraded to the level of a high school stoner circle, with reality TV playing in the background. On one point I agree with Trump, though for different reasons. We’re seriously fucked.