The late Gore Vidal explained that one of his ambitions as a historian and novelist was to determine “when the great cretinism began in the United States…when people got really dumb.” While there is plenty of room to debate the origin, it is beyond dispute that we’re living in peak cretinism.
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has exposed America at its worst – not only dumb, but hysterical, cowardly, and sickly sentimental. It has placed in the spotlight a dysfunctional political culture incapable of performing the heavy lifting necessary to maintain a vigorous democracy at precisely the moment when democracy is under assault.
