It's not the demographic, it's the message

The most important reality of all is Values starting with goodness, justice, freedom, and love. It matters not your religion or lack same, but your sense of what should guide what you do and say. If they have no root in the values named, it is not a metaphysical ghost that will call you out. It is science. We can now measure the effects of both expressions and actions. And we can determine where they land on a scale of values.

I say these things to set the stage for the current chapter in the saga of having done with one of the greatest besmirchers of good values we have ever known.

That would be Donald Trump.

The Sandberg interview

The occasion for this is the just-completed interview with Sheryl Sandberg who is the number two person at Facebook, During the interview, the fast-talking exec noted that Facebook lets advertisers target to anyone they like. She stressed that we have the freedom to set our privacy parameters. But clearly, if we fit some Demographic that Facebook is aware of -- we like red meat -- the advertiser can choose to loft Steak House ads at us.

It's not me, it's the values

The values noted at the outset do not apply to any demographic.

They apply to every living creature because the world cannot progress without them. The reason we are not falling off a communal cliff into nothingness is twofold. A majority of folk in the world are in tune with their conscience. They consciously choose the better values. And those who have some capacity to restrain idiots are still standing.

We have a world with too many dictators but we probably have the capacity to stop them.

Infants know

Notice that love is only third on the list presented. Love is fine but it does not work if it doesn't honor justice and tend toward goodness. The current casting couch wars about sexual abuse suggest the devaluation of love. So does the willingness to think of healthcare in terms of dollars, not lives.

Justice is beyond Jeff Sessions and Joe Arpeio. It has to do with being fair and civil and caring toward all.

If you do not consider these values as the intrinsic occupants of conscience, I suggest you interview some three-year-olds. If their minds have not been poisoned, they will probably understand the timeless values which brought them into being.

Russia is not going away

The Sandberg interview is like the Hound of Heaven to Donald Trump. He may not believe in heaven but when he goes ballistic it is usually because he believes he is a deity. The others who have gone this route have not ended up well. The Steele Report is a salacious document that no one wanted to publicize when Buzzfeed broke the silence around it.

But in the intervening months, much of what it says has been proved accurate.

If the Steele Document proves even partially reliable, we can see the last few months as Trump's artful effort to make us think about anything but its contents.