There’s something deeply disturbing about Hilary Clinton. That stare she has. If I were a child I’d hide from her. I think she may be a sociopath. And what’s with those Star Wars-esque outfits? That woman gives me the creeps.

As for Trump, he looks like a man who would kill a prostitute and think nothing of it. His hair looks like it’s on backwards or sideways – or something. He’s exactly the kind of guy you would hate to have as your neighbour. Arrogant, ignorant, xenophobic and brimming with hubris.

And Sanders is disturbing too, but in a different way. He looks and sounds like a very confused old man, and yet he wants to become the most powerful person in the world. Worst still, some other people think that’s a good idea. He reminds me of Hans Moleman out of the Simpsons for Christ’s sake. It’s all so surreal and yet it is real. That’s the most disturbing part. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.

To me, Trump, Sanders and Clinton are like the Bermuda triangle of politics. Logic and truth vanishes upon entering the political space between them, swallowed up by a sea of rhetoric and emotions and never to be seen again. There’s no right or wrong; it’s a fantasy land where whatever they say is true, and everyone can forever have everything they want for free. It’s a ménage à troi of, not co-ordinated, but spontaneous manipulation, and the American people are the ones getting screwed. And not in a good way.

Fascism or socialism: that’s the essential choice facing the American people in 2016. How did the most liberal and prosperous nation in history end up backed into such a corner? Because too many people came to associate expanding State power with prosperity and social progress; too many believe government is the solution to any given social problem.

To fascists like Trump and to socialists like Clinton and Sanders (and Rubio) the U.S’s giant State apparatus with its militarized police and its all-powerful surveillance agency is the ideal vehicle to carry out their deluded schemes. Their dreams are filled with what they believe they can do with it. Their dreams are free society’s nightmare.

How tragic that these people now have the means to inflict their impoverishing, destructive, hateful and divisive grand plans upon the people who will vote one of them into power to do so.

For centuries the means to do such a thing never existed. For a long time the power of the State lay dormant, kept confined by a vigilant people with a healthy fear of government. But, in time, those generations died and their descendents either grew complacent or had their heads turned by the ideas of liberalism and progressivism.

From the time government was granted the right to tax by compulsion the State began expanding into what it is today: a leviathan fit for the dangerous and deluded fascist or socialist politician who has most effectively beguiled a vulnerable people.

An evil with the same political and intellectual foundations as the ones that many Americans gave their lives to stamp out in Europe in two world wars. Evil-doers can be killed, but evil ideas cannot. Fascism and socialism is silently creeping over America and Europe and into the minds of a generation who think they are confined to history. Not so, they are being reanimated. But the problem is that the public doesn’t know how to recognise them.

This time around, however, governments driven by these ideologies are and will find it more difficult to grab a hold of a less tangible Internet and tech based economy and society. This is where hope lies.

The bookmakers have Hillary Clinton as favourite with Trump not far behind. Much may change before the U.S Presidential Election in November 2016, but what we can know with certainty is that, whoever becomes the next U.S. president, American society will be rendered less prosperous and less free.