For a man with a satirical turn of mind, presidential election years can be trying. Apparently your humble, obedient servant here isn’t angry enough to participate fully in the festivities. This is interesting, because I’ve rarely been mistaken for Mr. Sunshine.

Everywhere you turn, people are shaking their fists in each other’s faces. On television and online, that is. Most days, it’d be a good idea to don a crash helmet before opening Facebook. And the summer bickering season has hardly begun. These are mostly Republicans and Democrats fighting among themselves. The main event has yet to come.

Chez Pazienza recently described a mob of Bernie Sanders backers who disrupted a recent Clinton campaign event in Los Angeles. According to one witness, “they were cussing at people, calling women whores, and telling people to kill themselves. They were shouting in children’s faces, blowing sirens in their ears, and making them cry.”

Such antics would be hard to believe, had Pazienza not posted video clips. Asked by Rachel Maddow to disavow such behavior, Sanders basically ducked the question. And this is the Hippie Party. On college campuses, Clinton supporters complain they’re called “evil,” poor things.

At such times I’m reminded of Jonathan Swift’s timeless satire of the root causes of political fanaticism. Writing roughly 300 years ago, in the wake of the English Civil War, Swift concocted an imaginary religious sect called “Aeolists.” His target was anybody who claimed to be “inspired,” or as he saw it, filled with hot air.

Has a more apt description of candidate Trump’s cult of personality ever appeared? Is there nothing the man could say that would give his enraptured supporters pause? As Paul Waldman notes in the American Prospect, he’s a one-man tidal wave of disinformation.

Trump outdid even himself on “Meet the Press” last Sunday, dropping a couple of thunderous falsehoods in our collective faces.

“We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world,” he claimed.

Actually, U.S. tax revenue ranks near the bottom of the developed world as a percentage of GDP — just above Korea, Chile and Mexico. Corporate tax rates are theoretically high, but as most people know, loopholes are so plentiful that few companies actually pay them.

U.S. tax revenue per capita ranks near the middle of industrialized nations. As conservatives never tire of pointing out in other contexts, most countries in the European Union pay twice as much as Americans.

But then, why bother? One could devote whole columns, as Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler recently did, to debunking Trump’s epic falsehoods. Some of them are downright funny.

No, Vladimir Putin never called Trump a “genius.” He called him “flamboyant.” Only Trump, of course, would seek the Russian strongman’s approval. But do such considerations matter to the man’s encircled supporters, each with a bellows discreetly inserted?

I don’t believe that they do.

© 2016, Universal