This week’s sign that the Armageddon is upon us ...

By Jennifer J. Foster

... comes from 60 Minutes.

According to CBS News:

Now that actor Alec Baldwin is 50 years old, he might run for political office ...

“There’s other things I want to do [besides acting]. I mean, in a matter of weeks, I’m going to be 50,“ says Baldwin, who turned 50 on April 3. “There’s no age limit on running for office, to a degree. [It is] something I might do one day,“ says Baldwin.

Baldwin has been in the news over the past year mostly for what CBS calls, in the understatement of the year, his “nasty divorce-custody battle” with ex-wife Kim Basinger. Baldwin was publicly scorned when Basinger revealed a voicemail Baldwin had left for their daughter in which he called his daughter a “thoughtless little pig.“

Yes, Baldwin says; he has learned lessons from the experience. Good, right? The ugliness taught him to to act in a responsible manner, to deal with the vitriol and anger management issues that have overshadowed Baldwin’s professional career and, most importantly, to never take his divorce out on his child, right?

Um, not exactly.

“If you go through the things I have gone through with the media like this thing with my daughter, there’s only one thing that comes to mind initially: that is how my daughter must have felt to have this played out in public,“ Baldwin (says) ... “The second thing I realize is: you can pretty much bet all you own that I would never leave another voicemail message for my daughter that wasn’t just like something out of a Rogers and Hammerstein score.“

In other words, the only thing Baldwin apparently learned about his own character was never to reveal its true nature in public.

And if there’s any doubt, Baldwin delivers this charmer:

When asked by Safer whether it was abusive to call his ex-wife’s lawyer a “300-pound. homunculus with a face like a clenched fist,“ he replies, “I was being kind, Morley.“

Alec Baldwin for public office. The very thought of it is almost enough to make you want to leave the country.

Alec Baldwin, public servant.

And you thought we had problems with our government now.