Davos: Tell him what you did to her. Tell him!

Melisandre: We burnt her at the stake.—Game of Thrones, Battle of the Bastards

The defeated warrior, his troops dispersed in the confusion of surrender, his head bowed ignominiously like theirs, he confesses to all of his crimes and joins the Faith Militant, acknowledging that his revolution is over. The Bern has ended, the insurgency has collapsed. Democrats have no Queen but Hillary and only the Blue Queen will go forward in battle to defeat the Night King.

With each passing day, the 2016 U.S. Presidential race bears less resemblance to House of Cards and more to Game of Thrones, though with fewer dragons and more bastards. Each side drips with wicked intent, each Majesty willing to sacrifice anyone and anything that stands in the way of power.

This week, the night sky was alight with the fires of manufactured outrage over the latest Clinton email scandal, which revealed the naked writhings of the Democratic National Committee as it attempted to slay, seduce or spoil the stubborn beast that was the Bernie Sanders campaign. The denizens of noise huffed and demanded the head of the head of the Democratic National Committee, who was summarily dispatched, her curly locks still dripping red.

The denizens then demanded a new story. And so it was declared that this email scandal was hatched, not in the basement of a Chappaqua mansion, but in the dank cellars of Putinist Russia. For it was noted, that Donald Trump, the Night King, the Dark One, had a deep admiration for Vladimir Putin, who, like Trump has little patience for either laws or weakness.  Who better than Vlad the Impaler to destroy the Blue Queen on the very eve of her greatest triumph? The Surrogates outlined the Red Menace behind the Reddening of America, their lips pursed under furrowed brows. Trump, it seems, is not just l’enfant terrible, but thoroughly evil and willing to ally his vicious hordes with the Russians, dancing on the grave of NATO.

And thus the transformation of American politics is complete: the GOP has become a weird neo-Fascist party, of primarily older, white people, that disdains both personal freedom and free trade agreements, not to mention science. And the Democrats, while ostensibly supporting the downtrodden, have become the party of Bankers and Red Baiters.

It is enough to make one long for another season of Game of Thrones.