On the editorial page of the most recent Sunday Valley News, Paul Keane of Hartford ruminated about how Donald Trump’s tweets have led him — finally, at the age of 72 — to activate a Twitter account.

Keane marvels at the new ability to read — instantly and “unfiltered” — the thoughts of our president-elect “before the news gets packaged.”

Reading Trump’s tweets, he hopes, will let him know “where we’re headed.”

Now, it so happens that I am also 72 and I acquired a Twitter account soon after it was made available. But for me, Trump’s twittering has reinforced a decision I made shortly after acquiring my own account. I realized that any forum which limited its users to 140 characters could never have much value, because one could never express any interesting or complex thought. I decided, for once and for all, to boycott Twitter, never to use my account.

I now know I was exactly right on that score. But I also realize how innocent I was about the actual evil that Twitter could and would harbor. Donald Trump has shown us that possibility, but his constant tweeting is just the tip of the iceberg.

Twitter has enabled — nay, encouraged — a form of communication that cannot express any complex ideas, any subtlety or any uncertainty. It presents and promotes a vision of the world that is black and white and full of emotion.

Indeed, Twitter, with its 140 characters, is structured so as not to carry any actual information at all — just reactions to thoughts or events. And what reactions! In the political world, at least, Twitter specializes in verbal insults, unsubstantiated insults at approximately the intellectual level of the howls that a football crowd might hurl at the opposing team, insults such as one might hear at a grade-school playground where no responsible adult is present.

Twitter represents and enables not only a dumbing-down of public discourse but also a new venality in that common discourse. It represents a direct challenge to the human values endorsed by major religions.

But the whole picture is much bigger and bleaker than just the Twitter phenomenon. It can be argued that the greatest challenge to representative government today is the manner in which citizens get their information. The tweets from Twitter are a part of the problem, but they are supplemented by crackpots everywhere in online-land who have been attracted to the easy promulgation of their “ideas” to huge online audiences.

We are hearing a lot now about “fake news” on the internet —“news” purportedly manufactured to discredit an opponent or to promote a point of view.

Fake news is indeed a worrisome development; but far more prevalent are the flood of posts throughout the internet, including social media, that are not purposely-crafted falsehoods but mere nonsense from those who are uninformed or misinformed. Then, the multiple self-described “news” sources happily spread that nonsense to millions.

Ironically, a common target of the tweeters and the internet posters is the “establishment” press — respected broadcasters like CBS and newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post or the Valley News — which do make a valiant effort to make sure they are trafficking in truth.

And who is at the forefront, leading the cry against these defenders of responsible journalism?

Our Top Tweeter, of course. The next president of the United States.

Confidence in our future does not come easily.

M. Dickey Drysdale is editor emeritus of The Herald of Randolph.