Robo, I'm aware of the works you mention, they touch on the megalomania of the personality in the GOP, but the Lewis novel is disturbing in how complex the dystopian world he created and how it evolves. Good thing there wasn't WiFi or smart phones back then or keeping under the radar would have been much more difficult.

I heard a lovely story this morning from Faith Salie on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me; her then nine-year-old daughter saw a photo that her grandmother had taken with Bill Clinton. When Faith told the daughter who was in the photo, she answered "you mean Hillary's husband?" Hillary was a guest on the radio show today, and Faith said she originally told that story to Bill when she met him recently, and he thought it was funny (hard on the ego, but we're talking about a nine-year-old, not born when he was pres.) Hillary thought it was great!

Meanwhile, here in the US we're looking ahead to next week's Democratic National Convention. From Politico: Behind the Scenes at the DNC: Controlled Chaos and ‘Death Stares’
We helped run the podium at past conventions. Here’s what the Harris-Walz team is facing. It ain’t always pretty.

Trump thinks Monday night's speech is a bad gig for Biden; Trump isn't the best judge of what is good for the Democratic party, so we'll just pass on his observations. He'll probably spew his vitriol from the cheap seats on Truth Social or X all week.

An interesting paragraph in that Politico story:

For all but a small handful of speakers, we treat this as the “wedding guest” rule; it ain’t about you. You have to say what the candidate wants. This is not an easy message to deliver to a senator or House member. We still have nightmares about Harry Reid’s death stares, Maxine Waters’ death threats and one governor who told us to “stop busting his balls.” We’ve had to have uncomfortable conversations, like when we had to tell former Rep. Barney Frank in 2012 that because of his pronunciation challenges, his speech comparing “Mitt Romney” to the “myth of Romney” all sounded like “Miff Romney.” Or when we told a twentysomething actress that, as adamant as she was, her friends from her struggling days surely didn’t depend on Medicare; she probably meant Medicaid.

Do people go rogue? They have. In 2004, Al Sharpton couldn’t have been more agreeable — submitted a draft, rehearsed it, and then got up on stage and pulled an entirely different speech out of his pocket.

It promises to be interesting. I won't watch much of it, except for some of the evening ("Prime Time") activities.