Imagine you’re watching a TV show, and there are two characters on this show you absolutely can’t stand. Now imagine those two characters start appearing in every other show you watch. It makes you want to stop watching TV altogether.

That’s this election in a nutshell. I don’t like Trump or Clinton. No one does, with the exception of people who feel like they have to, or those who are so gung-ho that they have become cult-like. I once said that people voting for Trump are each voting for a different version of him, but let’s face it, so are those “with her.” Both candidate’s positions are about as nebulous as Orion.

Furthermore, despite both candidate’s unprecedented unpopularity, the mainstream media can’t deem to give much attention to a historic showing from the Libertarian party, unless it’s to make mountains out of mole hills. Gary Johnson even leads in approval among the military, which should be a reportable news item, but he didn’t know what Aleppo was. Odds are, neither did you, but we can all pretend we did now.

I hate that this election showed me that people are more loyal to a party than they are to themselves, and not even because they like that party, but because they hate the opposing party so much more. The messed up part is that both candidates are so similar in principle and action that I’m wondering why we’re having an election at all. No matter which one we pick, we’re getting the other in spirit. Both are corrupt, wishy-washy, flip-flopping, pretenders who use funds not meant for them for personal reasons, then try to peg the other as a horrible person for doing so. Both apparently have little regard for the constitution. Neither seem to be interested in toppling the abortion empire, and in fact, both are big fans of Planned Parenthood. One is literally being investigated for committing a huge crime, and the other has anti-Semitic and openly proud racist support that it is utilized from time to time. Oh, and he’s being investigated too.

This election is pure dog and pony. I used to scoff, and roll my eyes when people would tell me the two parties are the same, but this election has showed me how true this has become.

But most of all, I hate what this election has done to the American people. Things that wouldn’t be excused from their opposing party, and actions people have decried their opponents for doing are suddenly okay now that their candidate is doing it. Principles that people had have suddenly been tossed out of the window for the sake of “victory,” and what’s more, these people attempt to have their cake as they eat it by saying they still hold these principles.

I’ve lost people I considered friends, watched people I respected turn into raving lunatics, and fought with family over something I consider not worth the effort, but forced to confront anyway. I’ve watched this election make allies engage in something that directly matches up with cult-like behavior to the point where I’ve begun to doubt the American individuality I believed we all held – at least on the right.

No matter how this ends, this election has defined a lot of humanity for me. It’s a permanent scar on my view of the American psyche. This is the election where we as a nation decided that it was better to go to war with one another over some delusional belief that we’re improving this nation by engaging in the worst example of a duopoly we’ve ever seen, than embrace reality that we’re parading around fraudulent Emperors with no clothes. It’s the election where my former party, the Republicans, tossed aside what was a sure-fire opportunity to bring in someone who can enact real freedom bent changes to our government, but instead picked bread-and-circus reality TV.

Before this election began, I had a clearcut goal of resisting the social justice agenda, and ensuring that freedom and egalitarianism continued to be the overarching sentiment within America. I can’t wait to get back to that, but thanks to this election it seems that my list of allies in the fight has grown shorter, as my list of opponents gets bigger. Be it the consistent call for the destruction of white America, black America, the patriarchy, the church, the constitution, the quaker, the baker, or the candlestick maker, both the left and right have adopted some form of the social justice agenda. Populism, not individualism has become in vogue, and with people who just until a couple years ago were resisting it with all their might.

This election has cost us more than we think, and I don’t think we’ll see just how much until the dust settles and we’re cleaning up the mess. Still, I cannot wait for it to end, and at this point I’m not sure I care how it does, because the only difference will be who gets to gloat that they picked the right leftist.