No matter who wins the 2016 presidential election American democracy has been exposed. By putting forward two deeply unpopular candidates as the only realistic choices to lead the nation, the power brokers in the country that bills itself as the world’s beacon of government by the people for the people have shown the world how far the great experiment has gone astray. The candidates, in their race to the bottom, did the rest.

And the villain is human nature.

To many Americans, Hated Hillary personifies everything that is wrong with the U.S. political system. A power-hungry insider, a double-speaker who has relentlessly pursued her self-perceived political destiny in a cynical partnership with a sanctimonious sex pervert and known public liar, she has earned the people’s mistrust with the better part of three decades of bending the truth to her own means. But what she lacks in likeability she more than makes up for in her ability to raise money.

And nothing is more important in the U.S. democratic process than the big money controlled by the elites in the top one per cent.

On the ‘family values’ ticket is the Christian Right’s billionaire saviour, a thrice-married philanderer and proud tax-avoider who boasts about groping women, a narcissistic, bullying braggart born with a silver spoon in a foul mouth that spews lies and insults that appeal to the basest human instincts of his followers. He is a man endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan as the best person to Make America White Again.

There is no better symbol that the U.S. is an empire in decline than Donald Trump’s run for President. Consider this, no matter what happens on Nov. 8, there will be a sex pervert living in the White House.

But should we be surprised by the choices offered? Can the people really be trusted to pick altruistic leaders? Would selfless humans interested only in the common good apply for the job?

Think of it in scientific terms, specifically the science of evolution. If human beings are animals subject to Darwinian principles, the best human predators will rise to the top through the process of natural selection. Note, the best predators should not be confused with the best intentioned people. In fact, they are opposites.

Human beings sit at the pinnacle of the food chain, the planet’s most successful predators by any scientific calculation. As a species we subjugate all other species to our will, altering the very earth we live on to make things better for us, regardless of the consequences to competing species. Honesty, integrity and compassion do not come into play in the natural world. In fact, it can be argued that the higher traits that separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom are hindrances to getting ahead in human society.

Take any field of human endeavour—the military, politics, business, religion. At the bottom you have a mass of people striving to make their way into positions of influence, positions that will benefit them and their families, their allies and close friends.

Who among the masses will make their way up the human food chain? Will it be the people who are restricted by conscience or the concept of fair play? Or will it be the sociopaths who expertly mimic the traits needed to gain advantage while using every underhanded means at their disposal to achieve their goals?

Science says the sociopaths will rise through the ranks and history has shown it to be true, from Caligula to Genghis Khan to Hitler to Donald Trump. There has been a truism throughout human existence–If an industrious person/family/tribe/nation, through hard work and sacrifice, obtains something of value to other humans, be it gold, silver, wheat or salt, it will be taken from them unless they can protect it.

This has happened at every step along the human evolutionary path, from the first ape-like man who clubbed a rival to death over a dinosaur carcass to the tyrants of the modern world who plunder the weak and leave them to rot in mass graves.

Despite the best intentions of the founding fathers, the world’s most powerful country’s third act is playing out according to the human script. Built on slavery and the cultural genocide of its indigenous people, the land of the free and home of the brave has exploited and murdered its way around the world to attain and then protect its exalted position. It should not come as a surprise to well-meaning Americans that the sociopaths in the one per cent elite who have lead the charge throughout the country’s 240-year history are now firmly ensconced at the top in full defence mode.