I haven’t said much about Trump. What is there to say, really? He’s about what I expected to get after America refused for four decades to deal with its problems.

While it isn’t exactly predictable in its particulars, the general outline is not something unexpected. “I told you so” doesn’t really help though it’s fun to say. As the nominal “left” party blamed all its difficulties on the real left and all true political choices melted away, America chose rightward soft fascism as the default.

Trump is just a continuation of existing trends, not some outré norm-breaker, and he is very much in line with most of American history.

We are getting a version of what could have happened during the 1930s, when for the most part better decisions (after much resistance then too) were made.

No, no, nitpickers, it’s not a repeat of the 1930s. But there are certain obvious resonances.

It was funny when I was 12 or 13 or so and adults telling me that books were “too old” for me that I’d read four or five years before.

That happened frequently.

Read Moby Dick when I was in third grade. That was one of the books that I recall.

I never minded being underestimated. It’s very useful, most of the time.