"Okay, I've had enough, what else can you show me?"

I've tried to make this space more about the personal than the ideological, but things are getting out of hand out there, and I feel the need to make some statements which I personally think are on the same level as "fire, hot" and "water, wet" but, well, are obviously - astonishingly - not.

• Donald Trump - whose pronouncements have been as loud and ever-present as car-alarms for more than fifteen years now - is an intellectual and moral embarrassment to not just the American people, but to the human race. The fact that there is even a remote chance that this man could actually be the Republican candidate for President next year mortifies me. It means decency and intelligence are not even serious contenders for the Top Ten Qualifications. Compared to The Donald, W looks humble and introspective. 
• I read "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" years ago. All the way through. No kidding. With enjoyment, even. I'm being totally honest here. (I was sixteen). But then I realized that these were meant as realistic depictions of history and of human character. And that the author and her followers believed that these stories were visionary depictions of a struggle for the soul and future of the human race. And that they had developed a whole philosophy around these books, called "Objectivism". Wow, that takes some big ones. Makes L. Ron Hubbard look shy. As I've said elsewhere, I thought that was laughable, and paid no mind for forty years. Now I hear that there are surging numbers of people who take this cult to heart. Who pore over these prose caricatures as if they were - well, Gospel. 

I beg of you all, read some real books. And not just my old lefty intellectual pals from the 20th century  - try Shakespeare. Jane Austen. Dickens. Or some history - ANY history. (Or essays. You could even read some Karl Marx. Might surprise you.)  But don't base your world-view on TV or the internet or just two poorly-written novels. There's a universe of expression out there - more than two millenniums' worth of content, most of which you can access as easily as you access YouTube or FaceBook.  

If I sound worked up, well, it's because I'm worked up.