I was struck by two items from today’s internet reading. The first was an essay by Michael D’Antonio entitled “Trumpism is Winning.” If you’re feeling a bit buoyant, read this essay and it will bring you right down. The second piece was a report of the rape and murder of investigative journalist Victoria Malinova in Bulgaria. My linking these two items is idiosyncratic, I suppose, but it struck me that what happened to Ms Malinova is where we are heading under Trump and a militant male chauvinism. The Kavanaugh business has been a truth serum for Trump. In the course of it he has again and again and in more and more ways manifested his sniveling hatred for women. Someone should slap him silly. But no one even bothers to denounce him. Trumpian obscenities have become accepted, even embraced in our society and he is enabling and inviting the rest of the patriarchal cohort to crawl out of the shadows and come to the rally.