Next Up: Packing heat in downtown Cleveland. As of yesterday, over 35,000 people had signed a petition demanding the Republican National Committee close “Quicken Loan Arena’s unconstitutional ‘gun-free zone’ loophole.” No candidate has denounced the petition; Donald Trump is studying its “fine print.”

Can you imagine a Republican convention with Trump and Cruz supporters bristling with hardware, ready to protect the honor of their hero’s wife – egged on by two of the most repellent presidential candidates in American history, one of whom has predicted riots if he doesn’t win? But the delegates will be ready for ISIS; ready for protesters who have different ideas of how to make America great again; perhaps even ready to walk Cleveland’s nearby streets where the nation’s truly forgotten people live.

I spent last week in British Columbia’s Selkirk wilderness where I was reminded that the natural world is a majestic place largely indifferent to its strutting bipeds.

So I missed the titillating details of the newest chapter in American exceptionalism, the one in which we are no more the city on a hill but the laughing stock of the world.

As the laughter dies on our lips, may the ridicule these guys deserve give way to a determination to reclaim our public discourse.

And for those who look at Trump and Cruz and say it cannot happen here, consider the words of H.L. Mencken: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”