Since the canning of late night comics Stephan Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, the monologues of their colleagues - e.g. Seth Meyers, Jon Stewart, as well as Colbert and Kimmel themselves - have been hilarious, pointing out with incisive sarcasm and accuracy the ridiculous farce that is President Trump. I laugh as I've rarely laughed lately, but inside I feel a dread that is not soothed by humor.
The current assault on free speech, which we ridicule with impunity, is only in its first phase. Late night comics and everybody else will soon realize that Trump is the outward face of a destructive attack against not only Americans, but all of humanity, an attack much more powerful and dangerous than previous attacks originating in America since World War II, like those launched by the comparatively weak "McCarthy era" of the early 1950's, whose leader, Joseph McCarthy, was ultimately overthrown and disgraced. This new McCarthy era will not be overthrown and disgraced before it builds its poisonous stupidity into permanent structures in America and much, possibly all of the word.
