Hyperbole is dead. These days, Andy Borowitz and my friend Barry Freidman, two gifted satirists, seem to be merely repackaging the horrors that proceed like the quickening footsteps of the zombies Money and Power who have a bead on each of us certainly need our brains.

One note from a Mainer about Graham Platner. You might not know it, David, but when we knew each other in the fall of 1978, doing wonderful plays that seem like travelogues for a world of nuance and compassion that no longer exists, I was an alcoholic who was about four years away from bottoming out and getting sober. Although I consider myself a reasonably good person today, at that point I was humming along with Jim Morrison, "Oh show me the way to the next whiskey bar," and all the flirting and fornication and fighting that went with wanting desperately for something to make me feel anything. So, I think that, at least in part, I can empathize with what Platner went through after returning from yet another unnecessary war. If you listen to him speak today, his mental wounds healed, and subsequently he has made a Herculean effort to become about as well-informed a political person as I've seen in some time. He understands that the fight we're in the midst of is not one we consciously asked for, but we precipitated it when we blocked the most ruthless among us from evading taxes and tearing up regulations, we precipitated it when we did not agree that some members of our society should be eternal punching bags for those who need to feel superior because of their race or their brand of superstition. He gets that electing Susan Collins because she seems like a reasonable person is a mistake because she isn't. She's like the quiet guy at the back of the brownshirt rally who might not be the most enthusiastic hater but shows up nearly every time.

And please don't let anyone get away with equating disputed accounts of bad behavior with the felonies perpetrated by the president and his family. From now until Election Day, we will hear the name Graham Platner a lot, but ask yourself, if Graham had never been born, would the hit men at Fox have good things to say about any Democrats? So, you can say that Platner gives them what seems to an uninformed observer like a righteous excuse, but I would counter that their viewers don't need logic or good arguments, just "woke" pinatas to hit with their little sticks. Let's not get distracted. Trump has shaken the morally gelatinous "moderates," and this might be the moment when many of them who defended Reagan's treason and GWB's stupidity finally say, "I really can't do this anymore." Hell, even Bill Kristol is singing a new song.