I’m back again after a month of reflection, and, not surprisingly, nothing much has changed in the world of politics. I feel as though someone left the projector running while I took a break, and when I returned, the same movie was still playing. Which was not surprising, because many years ago I shut politics out of my life for fifteen years and had the exact same experience when I decided to step back into the arena and see what was going on in the Washington world of sleaze.

My conclusion was, and still is, that government is an inherently evil enterprise, used as a mechanism for a small group of people to gain ever more power over, and steal from, the general populace. So how do you fix evil? Unfortunately, you can’t. The primary purpose of government is to control people, while the primary objective of classical liberalism is liberty. It is therefore self-evident that the two cannot coexist.

While classical liberalism used to put up a pretty good fight against tyranny, it became clear more than a hundred years ago that it could not stand up to the avariciousness of human beings with bad intentions. Or even human beings who are not inherently bad but simply cannot resist the temptation of money and power.

Today, we are no longer a nation of laws, because the government ignores the law with impunity. And while government has been tyrannizing everyday citizens at an accelerating rate since its inception, Barack Obama must be given credit for having the chutzpah to take things beyond the tyranny tipping point. In fact, looked at from the perspective of accomplishing his chief goal — the fundamental change of America — he is arguably the most successful president in U.S. history.

Now, along comes the Face of Evil, the first woman ever to run for president on a major-party ticket. Hillary is a real-life version of Rhoda, the pig-tailed little girl doted on by her parents in the classic 1956 film The Bad Seed. In other words, she can’t help herself; she came into the world as a bad seed.

So for her, it goes beyond money and power. Larceny is deeply ingrained in her gray matter. Hillary is one of those rare people who, given a choice between accomplishing her goals honestly or dishonestly, will always choose the latter. It’s in her DNA.

Further, I believe that Schadenfreude, taking delight in the misfortune of others, is ensconced in her rotted neurons. As her many hot-mic comments suggest, the self-proclaimed champion of “It takes a village” does not discriminate. She genuinely hates all people.

So why am I bringing all this up now, given that these things are already known to a majority of Americans? Simply to make the point that the real problem with elections is that a majority of people take the candidates seriously and thus legitimize those elections. People (including so-called conservative media commentators) who clearly recognize that Hillary’s criminal acts are deserving of a thousand years in prison insist on talking about her as though she were a legitimate candidate.

That’s precisely what has bothered me about Barack Obama from the time he first appeared on the scene back in 2007 as the mysterious candidate from afar with no discernable accomplishments and no provable past. But he had one thing going for him that none of his competitors had: He was black (sort of), and he was (and is) a master at using that fact to prey upon America’s collective case of white guilt. And, of course, he possessed the all-important ability to lie with a straight face.

That he is still taken seriously after spending eight years lying to the American people and taking blatant anti-American actions day in and day out, is hard for a rational mind to fathom. He, like Hillary, should be in prison for life, but the Congress refuses to even attempt to impeach him let alone try to get him indicted for his crimes.

Which leads me to my prediction that Hillary Clinton would never be president of the United States. In a sane world, it would have been a perfectly reasonable prediction. My thinking was that even if she got the Democratic nomination, the FBI would take her down and Obama would happily put Joe Biden in to carry out his third term.

But, as embarrassing as it is to admit, it never occurred to me that FBI Director James Comey would sell out. Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova put it bluntly when he said, on The Laura Ingraham Show, that “Comey’s a dirty cop.”

Even so, I felt that once people heard Comey read the list of crimes the Face of Evil had committed, only the radical left (probably about 30-35 percent of the population) would vote for her. I was wrong, because I was thinking rationally, which is a dangerous habit in an irrational world. That’s why, even though most voters realize that Hillary is a hard-core criminal, they are so used to the entrenched system of corruption that they accept her as a legitimate candidate.

And that, dear reader, gets to the very heart of the issue. Taking any candidate, and the government in general, seriously is the underlying cause of America’s demise. It’s always a mistake to legitimize criminal behavior, as such liberty giants of the past like Lysander Spooner and Frederic Bastiat warned us.

As to the election, though the odds are against him, it’s still possible for Trump to win. But even if he did, what then? Even if he has good intentions, do you really believe he could bring about liberty-inducing legislation with a criminal Congress that hates him? Both houses of Congress, with Never Trump Republicans leading the way, would try to stifle every aspect of his agenda.

In fact, if Trump were to actually beat the Face of Evil, I’d look for an early attempt to impeach him. So, regardless of who wins on November 8, every American should be prepared for the worst.

One final thought: Ironically, liberty probably has a better chance of being resurrected if Hillary wins rather than Trump. Why? Because Trump has done something quite different from any other candidate in my lifetime: He’s started a genuine movement. Not a movement based on his own ideas, but, rather, based on the frustration and anger of the average informed voter toward the entire system. Most Trump supporters don’t want to see change within the system; they want to put an end to the system itself.

That’s why, if the Face of Evil were to take the White House on behalf of her master, Barack Hussein Obama, millions of people might soon be literally up in arms. Which, in turn, is why total gun control would be a top priority in a third Obama term.

I don’t believe that the radical left or establishment Republicans realize what the Trump phenomenon is all about. I don’t think even Trump understood it at first, but somewhere along the line he started to get it. The movement is not about him; it’s about draining the swamp, as he now puts it.

Like Obama’s success in pushing the ball inches from the tyranny goal line, Trump has given hope to those who want to dismantle the entire system. He has emboldened liberty minded folks in a way that Ronald Reagan never dreamed of. Truly, this election is about draining the swamp — which scares the hell out of everyone who benefits from the Washington Crime Syndicate’s activities.

So if Hillary wins, it may be too late for Obama to stop liberty-minded folks from continuing to revolt, something the Tea Party did not do after a couple of years of semi-effective noise-making. From the point of view of those who are intelligent enough to think philosophically about the ultimate destiny of Western civilization, if the Face of Evil wins, it’s going to be quite interesting to see if the public forcefully continues to insist that the swamp be drained.

If so, then the genie is out of the bottle and draining the swamp has already won the election.