We’ve entered the penultimate stage of this presidential demolition derby. The field has been winnowed to the major political parties’ two anointed nominees: the Donald and the Hillary. Let us pray. More polarizing figures could not be found with the superconducting magnet at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. The fights to nominations were vicious, petty, puerile, perverse, depraved, savage, a slapstick parody and a sham with a little surrealistic burlesque thrown in for good measure. The lead-up to Nov. 8 promises more of the same on a larger scale. It’ll be like a daytime soap turned into a feature film, complete with plot twists and special effects and surprise cameos and reverse camera angles and pretty much everything but car chases. Although, with Bill Clinton involved, you can’t rule it out. The hardest part is figuring out which is scarier: that one of these two is going to become the next president of the United States, or the American people get to decide. Politicians echo that refrain like hyperactive crickets in the summer dusk: “It’s what the American people want.” And “Let’s see what the American people want.” No! Let’s not see what the American people want. Have we learned nothing at all from segregation and the Civil War and The Real Housewives of Orange County? You want to know what the American people want? I’ll tell you what the American people want: drive-thru nickel beer night; to lose weight by eating potato chips; a warning label on their brake fluid to keep them from drinking it; and the laws of gravity repealed. Americans love the Home Shopping Network because it’s commercial free. God bless Americans.

Copyright © 2016, Will Durst. Distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate. Durst a columnist, comedian and former Pizza Hut assistant manager. You may write him at [email protected].