>Mfw no robot catgirl maid.

At the end of a process that made all previous campaigns seem like reasonable and dignified affairs, the 2016 US presidential election came to an end.

New lows on public discourse were reached, and in a fundamentally broken system both mayor parties ended op sequestered by truly unsavory characters. And of those two, the worst (if only marginally) came victor.

I have known, properly get to know about a dozen americans in my life. And any of them are more suited than either Clinton or Trump to hold a position on authority. That is tragic. The US, with over 300 million inhabitants, has no shortage of brilliant people.

That is why we, the rest of the world, watch in horror what has become of the US. It truly baffles me.

You guys sent people to the Moon, and now about half of you believe you didn't.

There are no “Golden Ages”. There was never a time when all was good in America. But you sure had your moments.

The USA is a country built around the idea that all men are created equal. It sounds cliché now, but in a time when slavery, nobility and caste were the norm for vast segments of the world, it was truly amazing. In many ways it led the way to the rise of Human Rights as a fundamental touchstone of modern civilization.

Equality, freedom and the promise that hard work will get you anywhere. Whats not to love? I'm wearing a Captain America hoodie right now. Unironically.

So what happened? Was it really that 9/11 broke the american spirit in a way that it never truly recovered? The land of the free somehow ended up being some corporate-centric surveillance state?

Sometimes I feel we are living in sci-fi times.

Mexico is postapocaliptic, with warlords fighting it out on makeshift armored trucks in the desert, the US is dystopic, a surveillance state ruled a corporation-serving populist demagogue and Japan is cyberpunk with pervasive, alienating technology and dropping birth rates.

And still no robot catgirl maids and flying cars. :(