I find I am finally exhausted with public life. I can't summon up any interest in the unfolding drama anymore. Maybe others share this view. If enough others exist, then the ratings will go down, which paradoxically will, have more effect on the Administration than the polls or marches.

Because, as often observed, Reality has become a Reality Show, and, you know, it's a terrific reality show. The brilliant but misunderstood genius is attacked on all sides by effete, mendacious jackals and envious snobs. Betrayed by his all too weak supporters, he fights on to restore the greatness of America and finally give the ordinary white guy a break. If you pitched it as fiction, it'd be too on the nose.(That, however, did not stop Ayn Rand.)

I don't know about stability, but Mr. Trump IS a genius of the first order, on par with history's greatest demagogues. Who would ever have thought that you could do that? To treat reality as a reality show and have that show accepted as real by enough people to send you to the White House? He's least as good as De Gaulle. Unlike the General, however, not another portion of talent does he have, the fellow is a complete zero, but that one thing he does have is one for the ages. As Cezanne said about Monet, "Only an eye, but, my God, what an eye!'

We now actually inhabit the reality that he has sculpted as his last and greatest artwork. In this new reality a person the old reality would have considered totally beyond the pale as a serious presidential choice--a somewhat dim old gent, semi-retired, an infamous playboy, the proprietor of a third rate real estate & branding company cum money laundry, a (merely) possible Kremlin asset--is really the President of the United States. And we must believe it--we have no choice.

Until November, of course, which is why 2018 will be a strangely suspended year. The reality show will run until at least then, because it's obvious by now that the present Congress is going for full impunity against any and all investigations and a full buy-in to Mr Trump's version of the real. They're all Apprentices now. And they're going to try to screw with the vote, everybody sort of knows that, because those guys understand that they can't really win a fair election, especially in 2018, and they're now so deep in the shit with Mr Trump that they absolutely must have the reality show become the permanent reality. Plus, well over 120 million Americans think he's doing just great--they're in it already.

So that could happen. Some manipulation of machines, or more restrictive statutes, maybe some October Surprise--the predicted Blue Wave becomes a dribble, and America, as it has many times in the past, shifts its identity. We will have decided to be a rightist authoritarian state with mass corruption, impunity for the rulers and crooked voting. The histories will reflect this, and declare the greatness of Trump. He'll be on the money, like Jackson. Or not. The demos might set things right, and decide they want the reality ante 2016 again, and put a Democratic super-majority in there, and what follows then will follow.

But meanwhile,I think I'll stop watching, at least for a while.