Politics is like...

. . . pro-wrestling, certainly, but sausage? 'Cause it grinds up and makes desirable otherwise unpalatable parts?

The perfect pairing with this year of real-life, unbelievably bonkers politics, here and abroad, is the TV show VEEP, which I have been love, love, loving since discovering it this spring.
It's dark comic fiction about the opportunistic but inept vice-president of the United States (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) and her hench-people that feels like an off-the-wall, behind-the-scenes documentary. 

I tried to watch the British original, The Thick of It, whose creators went on to make VEEP, and I could tell it was excellent and wanted to keep watching it, but I couldn't tolerate the see-sawing sea-sick–making handheld camera work. I wish they wouldn't do that.

Plans for the night: a cup of sugary tea and Season 4. (Season 6 is being aired now, but it's on HBO, and I don't have cable.)

Politics is like... sugar.   The pillar ^ is a piloncillo---a cone of unrefined sugar cane boiled down and poured into cone molds (like maple syrup candy).
It's a piece of political history itself--part of the old sugar/molasses–rum–slaves Triangle Trade. What we do for treats...

I got the piloncillo at Good Grocer, as part of my plan to try new things, especially all the foods they carry that I've never had (like fresh, ripe papaya). A coworker who lived in Costa Rica told me you cut chunks off the piloncillo and melt them in hot liquid, like natural sugar cubes.
It tastes caramelly molasses-ish, in a light and pleasant way.