Justice Scalia was a formidable roadblock to progress, a modern day Taney.

In various rulings and majority opinions, Justice Scalia ratified the second class citizenship of African Americans (re voting rights) and women (re reproductive health rights), and consigned thousands of Americans to a violent death by handgun. His dissenting opinions represent a sort of cahiers de doléances for American emocons, the victims of modernity.

One almost wishes the Presidency on Trump. The Tea Party pitchforks would expect him to live up to his promises. He would have about six months to “Make America Great Again” before their guns would come out.

Poor educational standards (exacerbated by an epidemic of homeschooling), the substitution of internet blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and Fox News for traditional sites of authenticated information, and the reality televisualisation of reality itself have led to the rise of the politics of Trump, Cruz, and Rubio: clownish, buffoonish, and outrageous performances meant to draw eyeballs and deaden brain activity.

Evangelical Christians have been the bane of American politics since they became a political force in the 1970s as the so-called Moral Majority. The theocratic polity they envision for America would make Torquemada blush. However, sometimes they are surprising: they have broken with Republican anti-science fanatics over climate change and appear to support “immigration reform” rather than wall-building and mass deportation.