This year’s Iowa State Fair set an all-time record for attendance. Over the course of eleven days, more than 1.1 million people made their way to the State Fairgrounds in Des Moines for a wholesome orgy of music, amusements, and impaled meat. That means, on average, more than a hundred thousand Iowans passed through the gates every day, and thanks to Iowa’s continued and baffling status as the site of the nation’s first presidential primary caucus, every one of them had the unique opportunity to personally engage with the electoral process in a way no other fairgoers in the nation can, by watching presidential candidates climb the Des Moines Register’s famous Political Soap­box.

Due to the superabundance of 2020 Democratic contenders, that meant there were dozens of chan­ces for attendees to get up close and personal with the people vying to lead our nation. Yet, except for front-runners like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the audiences were meager: a few paid shills in campaign merch and a scattering of onlookers who may simply have savored the chance to rest their feet for a few minutes. The slow but steady flow of fairgoers kept the same sort of polite distance from the spectacle they’d give a Moonie mass wedding.

They were wise to do so. What else can you call getting heatstroke while listening to a parade of interchangeable political hacks recite identical lists of empty promises and hollow catchphrases but a mad religious compulsion? The rote poverty of American political discourse is such an undeniable reality that even the act of pointing it out becomes part of the ritual.