By Michael Giere, The Stream - After the 2016 elections, many of us asserted that the election was only marginally about the candidates — it was more akin to a peasant revolt that caught the ruling class, elites, and professional politicians flat-footed. It was driven by the accumulating evidence that the federal government was working more actively against its citizens than for them, and cared very little about what average Americans want, need, or believe... Americans voted with their gut instincts that the two Washington political parties had merged into one — united by graft. They were corrupt, intellectually and financially, to their core. Worse, they no longer cared that the voters knew it. A brazen callousness and arrogance had hardened like cement.