bad leftwing humor, clickbait, and/or articles with the phrase "in the age of Trump" in the headline

The websites I followed in the Bush/Obama years are struggling for the right tone to deal with Trump.

Many just use his name and image for clickbait, to get outraged liberal juices flowing. Professor Juan Cole's Informed Comment site currently has the T-word in 14 out of 40 headlines on its front page. This isn't necessarily cynical but it is mindless.

These earnest lefties confuse cause and effect: The disease is oligarchy, Trump an egregious symptom.

He's also a walking caricature. That's one reason cyber-commentator Lauren Weinstein's attempt at a meme, Trump the Thug (at NATO headquarters), falls flat.

Thug isn't the right word -- clown maybe. Trump did in fact play a narcissistic boss on TV.

Weinstein's GIF misses the clueless unintended satire of the fake-gladhanding-turned-camera-conscious-posing on display in that clip. As macho swagger goes, it's preferable to Hillary Clinton's attempts to talk like a gunslinger -- at least it's funny.

The US system posed a grotesque set of candidate choices in the 2016 election. To personify this failure in one strutting buffoon is ultimately lazy.