Back in 1987, the Federal Communications Commission abolished the Fairness Doctrine, which required controversial viewpoints to be balanced by opposing opinions on air. And what we got was right wing talk radio.

Some of you may think that right wing talk radio is entertainment — or even worse, legitimate — but it’s not. It’s a cancer on our society. It’s a group of rage-a-holics who can’t control themselves, spouting hateful nasty things pretty much all day long.

It takes a toll. It takes a toll on them. And it takes a toll on us.

Far too many of us are just enraged now, without really knowing what we’re enraged about.

And one of those people is Donald Trump.

John McCain and Donald Trump back in 1968.

I don’t know what he’s so angry about, but it’s clear that he’s angry about something. He appears to be angry all the time. And I thought the guy had a pretty good life. Silly me.

First Trump painted pretty much all Mexicans as rapists in his campaign launch speech, although adding that some of them must be “good people.”

Now he’s let John McCain know that he’s not a hero because he “let” himself be captured. within his caustic words, there’s even the kernel of a point. Some of McCain’s current status as a war hero has it’s genesis in his capture by the North Vietnamese during the war. Of course, what made McCain a hero was his courage, his stoicism, his refusal to succumb. While McCain was in a prison cell, Trump had just graduated from college with a draft deferment and then a high draft number, and was preparing to “take Manhattan” as an executive in his father’s real-estate firm, and to consort with a lot of beautiful women.

You have to give Trump credit for one thing, however: he does not back down. If anything, he doubles down.

It will be interesting to see if his early lead in the Republican polls will take a hit. But the fact that this egomaniac, this certified narcissist, this captain of the clown car would ever have a lead in the polls — even among Republicans — is a scarlet letter on our collective political psyche.

Politicians never cease to trot out that old canard about how smart the American voter is.

Baloney.

The average American voter is an idiot. The average American voter chooses against his or her own interest on a regular basis. The average American voter votes against the unions — who brought him the middle class — and for some gazilionaire on the laughable theory that this guy has any interest in the average American voter.

I mean, don’t get me started. (Well, I guess I just did.)