Update, 9 Nov 2016:

The political ascendancy of Donald Trump would be a fascinating and mildly amusing study in American celebrity culture, were it not such a potential threat to my safety and quality of life. Really no surprise that after years of a party defining itself through ostentatious wealth, belligerent ignorance, racial hatred, conspiracy theories, and loveless religiosity, they would end up nominating a wealthy and belligerently incoherent conspiracy-spewing racist TV celebrity backed by xenophobic white supremacists, able to con supporters with sheer bombast combined with just the thinnest and most pathetic of religious veneers. It’s made for some interesting reading, at least: (List updated as more good content becomes available)

• How Trump Took Hate Groups Mainstream: The full story of his connection with far-right extremists.
• Conservatives Have Groomed the Perfect Suckers for Trump’s Epic Scam.
• Trump’s Ghostwriter tells all.
• Itemized list with citations on Trump as fascist.
• Mark Bowden’s recollections of writing about Trump for Playboy.
• Matt Taibbi on how the Trump campaign is killing the GOP.
• Jamelle Bouie on the rise of Trump as a result of white supremacist anti-Obama racial backlash.
• NYT: Insider accounts of the party’s now-unsuccessful attempts to stop Trump.
• WashPost: The myth and the reality of Donald Trump’s business empire — biggest headshaker here is the Trump Network, an MLM that licensed his name to sell vitamins on questionable science claims.
• Faruk Ateş’s Trump is a master psychological manipulator who thrives on attention, even when negative.
• Doug Muder’s Trump is an infection in a diseased party that is easy prey for hucksters.
• Oliver Willis’s Trump is a flamboyant WWE wrestler. This is literally true.
• Worst Manchurian candidate ever.
• Meanwhile, viral opportunists cash in on the Trump craze.
• Fascism, fascism, fascism.
• Small hands, small hands, small hands.

For my amusement I have my own conspiracy theory: Trump is actually a Clinton agent tasked with boosting Hillary Clinton’s campaign by wreaking havoc on the GOP primaries, but ended up doing his job just a little too well, and now is frantically attempting to terminate the mission, only to find that every increasingly outrageous thing he says to self-sabotage his campaign is only met with greater cheers from an all too suggestible fan base.

In any case, perhaps a foreign exit plan in case of a Trump win would be prudent. Seems returning to the Philippines is not an option.