Our culture does not respect reason and logic. We do not value the primary things that set us apart from chimpanzees.

I was sorely disappointed when I was commanding a small platoon of soldiers protecting two gas stations in Baltimore after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated --- and realized that mob psychology could instantly transform a group of human beings into a horde of howling animals, without coherent thought or conscience. If we had run out of tear gas grenades, it would have been kill or be killed. I have been unable to look at humans in quite the same way ever since.

Trump taps into that weakness of humanity just as a virus infects living cells. He and the politicians who exploit his power are a dangerous disease.