Americans, and much of the rest of the world, seem to be functioning under a guiding principal which requires that the world operate at or below the lowest common denominator. Thus, in a major debate leading to what was once the most powerful job in the world, we find that the best that either candidate can serve up is a thin gruel of heavy spin, misdirection, and lies.

Instead of inspiration and leadership, we get unreliable numbers and opinion, rarely guided by anything so old-fashioned as fact. Neither candidate could be bothered to say anything that even resembled the truth, relying instead upon the theory that if a lie is told often enough, people will come to believe it. Suffice it to say that it was not a highlight of even political thought.

Worse, neither candidate could be bothered to say anything much about people and what people may need. When people were mentioned, they were mentioned as examples of cost, one way or another. It is bad enough to be subjected to political polemics ad nauseum, but it is purely nauseating when our leaders care only about money, without even a nod to the individuals they claim to represent.

Pandering so completely to the gods of the dollar while clearly not even considering the human beings that make up our country’s population plunges all of America into the bottomless philosophical toilet of the dollar. There is no component of this rhetoric which even begins to consider either ethics or humanity.

How on earth can we be expected to lift ourselves onto any sort of higher plane when our leaders insist on throwing us into the water and endlessly flushing? Why do we let the specter of mindless and impersonal business run our lives? Have we all forgotten what it feels like to be a compassionate human being in the face of rampant greed for money and power?

We should, truly, be ashamed for the candidates, and for ourselves.