And I think I've become resigned to the thought the election of 2016 is a referendum on the American people more than anything else.

If it weren't Donald Trump it would be somebody much like him. What's at work is the same process by which Weimar Germany brought forth Hitler, or somebody much like him. It's happened many times before.

I'll happily admit that my guy Bernie's candidacy is also a product of dissatisfaction with America today. But I'll pick the guy with the constructive solutions over the guy who promises to just burn it all down. The question is, what percentage of Americans feel that way too? At the moment it's looking like Bernie's boat has sailed, to answer my own question.

I'm really kind of a hard-core idealist about democracy. It's not so much the worst form of government except for all the rest, with all due respect to Winnie. In my view, democracy is the most moral form of government because it aims to maximize self-determination.

And self-determination absolutely must include the right to fuck up, and fuck up big time. Democracy embodies its own permanent Achilles Heel: It isn't democracy if you can't give it away.

I can tell you, on an intellectual basis, that I'm proud of American ideals in the abstract, and proud of some the things that America accomplished in the lost past.

But proud to be one of these latter-day Americans? Not so much.