The message of the San Jose violence is that you don't have a right to go support the candidate you want as you had in the past. No more corny political rallies, no more cutesy red-white-and-blue satin basketball outfits with pom-poms to cheer your candidate, they are off limits without bullet-proof vests and bodyguards.

If you ignore this new reality, you will be beaten to a pulp by righteous mobs brandishing foreign flags. You don't have that right anymore.

Politics is now a maelstrom of baying mobs with burning tires, shattered bottles, eggs hurled, shot-out tires, smashed in windshields, rocks hurled as cops stand around doing nothing.

Nor, if you are a Democrat, do you have a right to have your vote counted fairly - the establishment above you has named some pigs more equal than others and created a superdelegate system that makes a mockery of voter sentiment, and enforces the status quo.

What does it add up to? A realization that democracy itself is under assault, far weaker than anyone realized. We took so much for granted and it looks ready to vanish faster than anyone ever expected.

The real story of this election is the assault on democracy and the question of whether it can be turned around.

Editor's note: this was adapted from a Facebook essay