William Faulkner on Donald Trump

There is a fantastic, intelligent, rather low-key article over at Atlantic just now that I think nearly every adult a  American should read, I think.

Will America Earn the Right to Survive?

William Faulkner’s provocative question from 1955 echoes loudly in 2016.

This, below, isn't the point of the article--and it's a great point--but I love this author's comparison of one of Faulkner's characters compared to current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Faulkner had created in his fictional universe a minor Southern incarnation of Trump: Flem Snopes, an unscrupulous and voracious predator with “eyes the color of stagnant water”, who claws and lies his wily way to power, cheating and conning anyone naïve enough to think they can outsmart him. In Flem and his clan, Faulkner excoriated many of his fellow citizens who “know and believe in nothing but money and it doesn’t much matter how you get it.” He harbored no doubt about the harm people like the Snopes tribe could inflict if allowed to reign and proliferate, if their “stupid chicanery and petty corruption for stupid and petty ends” were ever to prevail. Given the latest polls, such an electoral apocalypse seems increasingly unlikely, but the mere fact that Trump is even a viable candidate, would be terrifying to the author of "Absalom, Absalom."

It's a terrific, brief read. I'd argue it's nearly an important read, for all of us.