i start this post from fred with several mencken quotes and have several others, that could be seen as preamble to fred's essay;

The government I live under has been my enemy all my active life. When it has not been engaged in silencing me it has been engaged in robbing me. So far as I can recall I have never had any contact with it that was not an outrage on my dignity and an attack on my security.
H.L. Mencken

There is always an easy solution to every human problem - neat, plausible and wrong. H. L. Mencken

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." H.L. Mencken

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

H. L. Mencken

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. H. L. Mencken

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. H. L. Mencken

and now here's fred's opinion;

Further, American democracy isn’t one. To be elected a candidate needs support of one party or the other. These choose predictable candidates who will perform the primary political  functions, namely to protect Wall Street, Israel, the big corporations, and the military budget. You and I get to choose only the candidates the parties allow us to choose. The real reason for the bipartisan loathing for Trump is that he wasn’t vetted in the usual manner and isn’t beholden to the system. He might do anything, such as ending the wars.

Consequently American government just doesn’t work. Can anyone believe that Joe and Kamala, second-rate lawyers both, should govern a nuclear-armed country of 330 million? Joe was elected because he wasn’t Trump, Kamala for being black, Trump for not being part of the reigning elites. Joe and Kamala aren’t bright enough for the job. Trump and Joe are under investigation for corruption. This our system produces. 

No requirement exists that candidates be intelligent. Americans resent the intelligent, this being an expression of the resentment of the superior that underlies society. We want jes’ folks. No pointy-headed intellectuals need apply. We get what we want.......more.......