On Trump's performance at the debate ...

I knew I had either seen it before, or read about it someplace.

He seemed so rigid.  At times like an automaton speaking a recorded script - repeating the same thing over and over.  At times hovering over his opponent, pretending to assert 'his' party platform while repeatedly throwing out barbs to 'vilify critics and shut down debate' - by intimidation.  Yet Trump simply repeated what had been scripted for him, feigning sorrow for vulgar speech and immorality, yet blaming others and interjecting lampoons, such as, 'you'd be in jail' - in a craven effort to convince his supporters that he is THE man to save the country and make America great again.  I didn't really consider his 'style' until reading a comment on another post.  It's Orwellian "manipulative phraseology, full of euphemisms and doublespeak" - at it's worst, I might say.

Tax-avoiding billionaires become “job-creators.”

“When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has the curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance towards turning himself into a machine.” - George Orwell, Salon

That's from an old Salon article.  It fits.

I was also reading what Andrew Sullivan had to say on the Trump ascension/power-grab.  I may be wrong, ill informed, even off-base in my assessment of Trump - but only to the extent of identifying which ideological compartment he fits into.  Sullivan sees a tyrant in the making - I do too.  He also connects it to neo-Fascism - I do too.

Trump launched his campaign by calling undocumented Mexican immigrants a population largely of rapists and murderers. He moved on to Muslims, both at home and abroad. He has now added to these enemies — with sly brilliance — the Republican Establishment itself. And what makes Trump uniquely dangerous in the history of American politics — with far broader national appeal than, say, Huey Long or George Wallace — is his response to all three enemies. It’s the threat of blunt coercion and dominance.

And so after demonizing most undocumented Mexican immigrants, he then vowed to round up and deport all 11 million of them by force. “They have to go” was the typically blunt phrase he used — and somehow people didn’t immediately recognize the monstrous historical echoes. The sheer scale of the police and military operation that this policy would entail boggles the mind.

To call this fascism doesn’t do justice to fascism. Fascism had, in some measure, an ideology and occasional coherence that Trump utterly lacks. But his movement is clearly fascistic in its demonization of foreigners, its hyping of a threat by a domestic minority (Muslims and Mexicans are the new Jews), its focus on a single supreme leader of what can only be called a cult, and its deep belief in violence and coercion in a democracy that has heretofore relied on debate and persuasion. This is the Weimar aspect of our current moment. Just as the English Civil War ended with a dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell, and the French Revolution gave us Napoleon Bonaparte, and the unstable chaos of Russian democracy yielded to Vladimir Putin, and the most recent burst of Egyptian democracy set the conditions for General el-Sisi’s coup, so our paralyzed, emotional hyperdemocracy leads the stumbling, frustrated, angry voter toward the chimerical panacea of Trump. - Read it all here.

These are things to consider - to really examine.  I make no claims here - but it makes sense to me.

I was surprised to learn that older Americans are among the biggest supporters of Trump.  I suppose I should have known that.

Some people have already cast their vote by absentee ballot - and may be regretting it.  Those who haven't voted yet, before you go to the polls or submit your absentee ballot, please do as Pope Francis advised: "Study the proposals well, pray, and choose in conscience."