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This frenzied devotion to freedom in its most perverted form, a kind of Promethean exultation in unbridled will and desire, sits in weird juxtaposition with a cultish, masochistic worship of leader figures.

Let’s counter the ceaseless scorn from the right about members of the “liberal news media” by saying something uplifting, perhaps a bit grandiose, about journalists: Many of them, probably most, have been doing a Promethean job, working under greater and greater duress to present the fire of truth to the public.

Yeah, I expect some hate mail for "Promethean," because it sounds so darned elitist and stupid all at once.

Working as a journalist in America has never been easy, but it is now truly a Promethean task, thanks in part to our wannabe dictator and amid a splintering media environment, meddling owners and capitulating corporate overlords who cling to outdated practices in the face of the massive right-wing disinformation machine.

Perhaps the most influential European of all — at least to Americans in permanently arrested adolescence — was the Russian immigrant, Hollywood screenwriter, novelist and cult leader Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, better known as her Promethean alter ego, Ayn Rand.