If you follow the continuous daily press coverage - nobody seems to really understand the underlying explanation of Donald Trump's shocking rise to power in the 2016 presidential election. Here's the basic info: Mitch McConnell is the guy to watch, not Donald Trump. Trump and all of his clown circus are just a distraction. Yes, it's a Constitutional crisis, on many levels, but Trump is merely a distraction. The real guy to watch is Mitch McConnell, who engineered the derailment of Hillary Clinton's popular election victory by some three million votes. In many ways over the past eight years, including denial of Obama's moderate Supreme Court nominee in favor of a radical corporate henchman, and engineering the overthrow of Hillary Clinton's wide popular election victory, Mitch McConnell and his corporate owners have ensured that we never see health care reform - at any cost. Why? Because the corporations who own Mitch, and who run a national U.S. holocaust in corporate health care denial (laughingly called "health insurance"), steal a trillion dollars every year from our economy, and they do not want to lose it. Neither the corporations nor their political arm (the Corporate Party, laughingly called "republicans") could afford to allow Hillary to assume office as the popularly elected President of the United States. According to a landmark 2009 Harvard study, health care denial kills over 45,000 U.S. citizens a year. You could be next, or your child, your spouse, or other loved ones. Not only do Mitch McConnell's owners murder over 45,000 citizens a year (an ongoing U.S. national holocaust that nobody talks about, including the corporate press, which is not a free press but a fee press) but this same holocaust maims countless others through for-profit shortcutting, and they bankrupt millions of families when a major medical emergency strikes. We are the only modern industrialized nation where universal health care is not a fundamental human right for everyone. Health care must not continue to be a privilege of the wealthy, for whom our national holocaust is a source of vast blood money ($1 Trillion a year stolen from our GDP). It's all in this article. In this article, the author wastes as little time as possible talking about Donald Trump, and focuses on the real crime here: for the second time in a generation, corporate money and corruption has stolen a national election. Comparisons in history include the last days of the Roman republic (not empire). The Roman republic was a key source of modeling for the U.S. Framers of the Constitution in 1787. As one of history's many ironies, Rome was in the air in those days. English historian Edward Gibbon published his famous six-volume "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" starting in 1776 (the year the American colonies separated from England) and finishing in 1788, just as the U.S. Constitution was in ratification by the original thirteen states. The author discusses the broader history, but most importantly the ongoing implications of Reaganism, the corporate seizure of power in the United States, and the buffooning of the USA under Bush 43 and Trump-all for corporate benefit. We need to know this stuff so that we can vote every last Corporate Republican out of office and restore democracy before it's too late. Two stolen elections, amid a hail storm of lies, in sixteen years is the last wakeup call. This is intended as the first of a series (EX-NAX or Explanation Nation) delivering a totally different and cogent explanation of our divided, chaotic world. There is an explanation, nation, and here it is. Divisiveness is no accident, but a long-term, cynical strategy by the corporate owners and operators of our nation to weaken the government, and thereby destroy unions, health care, workplace safety, minority rights, and respect for law. Look for future installments of EX-NAX: Explanation Nation from John T. Cullen, published by Clocktower Books.