Anthony Trollope on PBS Newshour

Trollope predicted the whole thing in his novel "The Way We Live Now", circa 1880, but our news gathering organizations failed to reach out to him for some reason.

They would have been well advised to read Trollope first, and then take their places at the anchor desk and don the pundit suits. It's all there in Trollope's beautiful, shining book–every fast and slow muscle twitch of human nature, the battle ground state between city and country folk, a steady theme of world literature since Homer, the machinations of any and all political organization in a decidedly western country...

It was both sad and highly amusing to watch the news person's jaw drop, the face then become dour as the 'news' of the election, first a trickle and then a flood, came through that the new king would not be the queen they all expected, At first it was as if someone had farted at the dinner table; and then, in the wake of the untimely fart, uncomfortable things began being said to cover up how uncomfortable it was for everyone having to hear the fart in the first place, never mind naming the name of that someone who farted. Pretty soon that same someone had a nuclear bomb in his hand and was sure to appoint Adolf Hitler to the Supreme Court.

Knowing their livelihoods were now suddenly at stake, the scene among the media professionals became confessional. Suddenly they became human, it was even sort of sweet: they were powerless, just like everyone else, and they'd been out-celebrity'd by a little monster they helped create, but had no capacity, or will, or real investigative imagination, or interest, in truly understanding.

Viewers like you and me were hoping for one of them to say something along these lines: you know there's another way to view this phenomena-that Americans are liberal and broad-minded enough to elect a man who's misogynist, cheats on his taxes, lies through his teeth-but that viewpoint was not forthcoming.

By then the hour was late. We'd all seen and heard enough. It was time to get some real information that only exists in a great book. It was time to make Trollope great again.