#imbecility

When Mencken writes about William Jennings Bryan, the lawyer who was on the wrong side of the Scopes Monkey Trial, and the wrong side of history, it's hard not to feel that he's writing about Donald Trump:  "The old boy grows more and more pathetic. He has aged greatly during the last few years and begins to look elderly and enfeebled. All that remains of his old fire is now in his black eyes. They glitter like dark gems and in their glitter there is immense yet futile malignancy... His speech was a grotesque performance and downright touching in its imbecility... It seemed a sheer impossibility that any literate man should stand up in public and discharge any such nonsense. Yet the poor old fellow did it."