A Republican primary race that has for months alternated between spectacle and abomination has over the past 20th hours ignited into a raging, full-blown dumpster fire. One stoke by a group of men who hope to become the most powerful person in the world.

[Donald Trump] spreading preposterous rumors that [Ted] Cruz`s father had connections to Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of JFK. That put a bit of a damper on the bromance ultimately culminating in Cruz`s epic non-endorsement at the Republican convention.

The degree to which I try to be honest that there's some Donald Trump in all of us. The seduction of the promise of order, the politics of white fear, it's not just some other group of uneducated white people who are susceptible to those appeals. It's everyone. And not just white people, frankly. All Americans have this susceptibility to a politics of fear and order that I think we have to be really honest about.

I understand that that`s the theory of the case for [Donald] Trump supporters and it`s what Donald Trump says, and it`s possible that that is actually the case.

After campaign financial reports show more money spent than raised in the month of September. Report adds to growing speculation that Donald Trump is not in some very deep psychological sense, actually running to be President of the United States, so much as he`s running to build up a fan base for Donald Trump.

Because we [the USA] are so powerful, our failures resonate more. In some ways, the worst victims of our institutional and elite failures, through the ripple effect of financial crisis and war, aren't Americans.

Like Trump`s presidential bid, the Brexit campaign has been driven largely by fears of cultural penetration, immigrant invasion, and the genuine crisis of Middle East refugees dying to get into Europe, all channeled into a kind of inward-turning form of ethno-nationalism.