US idiocy

re your comment on predicting Trump, there is HL Mencken's famous phrase:

"It is IMPOSSIBLE to underestimate the intelligence of the American people."

and then from Richard Hofstadter's 1964 book on Ant-intellectualism in American Life:

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

Only thing stupefying me about Trump so far is that all his EPA appointees come from the great wasteland called Oklahoma—Inhofe et al, climate change deniers to the last, but climate change is inescapable and by going back to our old way of doing things, it will merely come all the quicker

all best