Foreigners Aghast at Routine American Election

“It is difficult to think of anywhere else in the western world where these debates would have any credibility outside of a fringe party (even if the fringes in Europe are now spreading). Far from indicating America’s exceptionalism, it looks more like an awful parody of the stereotypes most outsiders already believed about American politics at its most bizarre. ‘Those who follow this race daily may have long since lost perspective on how absurd it is,’ said the German magazine Der Spiegel last week.”
 — If you have talked to any foreigners over the last two months*, you may have noticed they are wide-eyed in horror over the people running for president, whereas we natural-born citizens are too busy with capitalism to really think about just how bonkers all this is. (*Except for religious extremists who live under “sharia law”! They are probably totally down with all this stuff.)