“the whole affair is an apotropaic exercise” I do OK on Jeopardy and scored well on my English SAT, but I never heard of that word. The main point of the article is that even if Trump wins, he is going to be unable or unwilling to solve some of our biggest problems. I think that is worth pointing out. However, I’m not sure I want to subscribe to American Spectator if this is their normal fare.
Frantic digging in a thesaurus yielded that one, I’m sure.