Donald Trump’s run for president of the United States speaks more about us and the nation we envision. Are we to be a nation of enlightened egalitarian citizenry, as promulgated in the U.S. Constitution’s Preamble “in order to form a more perfect union,” or a nation of unsympathetic,  grasping, socio-regressive misanthropes? A nation imploding from within, from dissociative resentment rooted in learned bias and prejudice.

“… And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! …

a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.” — MACBETH, ACT 5, SCENE 5

Here's the thing… Like all despots Trump wants raw power as a self-validating attainment of control over personal destiny — the ability to "dictate" (as in dictator complex) absolute dominion over conditions and people to bend life to his personal will and desires as an extension of his megalomania. Like all demagogues, he hucksters the self-identified disenfranchised to arise from their sense of powerlessness and join with him in "taking back" their power  that has been usurped by the "others." A time-tested simple formula for the simple-minded. The joke on pundits and intellectuals in Trump's case, however, is that his perceived ingenious in manipulation is not an expression of keen intelligence exploiting opportunity, but rather the workings of a deficient intellect devoid of simple cognitive ability to fathom basic concepts like race profiling. His ascendancy says more about the population at large, especially the gullible and close-minded, than about Trump. However you cut it, it's still all about class and race.

As far as the 2016 American presidential race goes, Hillary Clinton is the Middle Way or Path factor that gets my nod.

Not being one for wearing any label as a tight fit, having no strict political party affiliation when I was protesting for various human rights issues and working with many activist personalities …

If I were to define myself these days by popular description, I would go with centrist. I believe in self-rule by consensus as a guiding principle to the degree possible without rolling over and playing dead. I have deep respect for Bernie Sanders, but as an ideologue (which I don't consider negative, just factual), with his raze the barn and start over approach, I don't see him as the fit needed.

A mystifying populist movement with many young women devoid of the knowledge or experience or appreciation of the pathways opened to them by Hillary Clinton and ilk, embracing a grandfatherly-looking man to take them to the mountain top of a perfect society is a sign of patriarchy. Considering how the majority of religions/paths and their lineages, even ironically those of middle path assertion, are polarized to male dominance— dominated by men for men (nuns and sisterhoods kept separate and subservient), it is no wonder Millennials and new age supporters for Bernie are choosing balls over womb.  It’s what we know.

Native American / First American peoples have long recognized the importance of the womb beyond a physical female organ where offspring are conceived and in which they gestate before birth. They grokked the spiritual womb underlying the biological one as the place of origination and development of the spirit for birthing a fully evolved human being.  One that would embody the qualities of nature essential to the continuation of the people and harmony. To that end various Native tribes were moved to reenact the monthly menstrual cycle of women, so that men could know, as far as possible, the suffering and purification of the “period” through the dynamic experience of the Sweat Lodge. 

Native people recognized the

  importance of balance in the polarity of nature between male and female. They sought to bring the mind of men into “right mind,” whereby their drive for forceful action would be imbued with a nurturing impulse toward the good of the whole.

War and peace hang in the balance of these two polarities.