The system is blinking red at Trump

There is as yet no cascade of elected Republican officials disowning Trump -- that is, stating that they won't vote for him or support his campaign to be president. Still, denunciations of him by conservative and (allegedly) nonpartisan partisan establishmentarians are growing ever less inhibited. Below, some remarkable indictments.

First, knee-jerk neocon Charles Krauthammer, who never met a proposed military action he didn't like, but can recognize a personality who will up-end the U.S.-dominated world order:

Of course we all try to protect our own dignity and command respect. But Trump’s hypersensitivity and unedited, untempered Pavlovian responses are, shall we say, unusual in both ferocity and predictability.

This is beyond narcissism. I used to think Trump was an 11-year-old, an undeveloped schoolyard bully. I was off by about 10 years. His needs are more primitive, an infantile hunger for approval and praise, a craving that can never be satisfied. He lives in a cocoon of solipsism where the world outside himself has value — indeed exists — only insofar as it sustains and inflates him.

Next, David Brooks, self-appointed moral arbiter, finding a true north with his often erratic moral compass:

A pair of July 4 warnings, and one eulogy

If I ever picked up the phone to a pollster, I guess I'd have to say I don't like the country's direction. To celebrate the Fourth, then, I'd like to highlight a trio of warnings/diagnoses published today.

The first is by Kurt Andersen, writing in the Times about The Downside of Liberty. He is not the first to link the sixties mantra "if it feels good, do it," with the '80s' "greed is good," but he does so cogently: