When I was a kid, my dad took me to a carnival, replete with acrobats, “wild” animals, games with silly prizes, and tented sideshows. The latter were the most intriguing to me, but not because of what was supposedly inside the tents. No, it was the guy who stood outside, enticing all passersby to cough up their money to see the oddities and freaks housed within. Donald J. Trump never utters an honest word. He lies about everything, even things that are trivial, that matter to no one, least of all to him. He told the American people that he was one of them, that he would bring manufacturing back to the US, that he would lower the price of food and other stuff the people needed but could not afford. He lied about an immigrant crisis, a crime wave sweeping America, about a lack of support to North Carolina residents after a hurricane, and about how the fires in California were not climate-change related, but were due entirely to mismanagement of forest and water by Democrat politicians. He lied about having built a wall, and that Mexico would pay for that wall. He lied about a pandemic that cost thousands of lives. He even said Haitians were eating dogs and cats in Ohio. And the more outrageous the lies he told, the more mesmerized his audience became. And so, they voted for him, for the carney barker, for the man who just wanted them to part with their money so he might have it. They paid to go into the tent to see the freaks, and inside all they found was a mirror.