A New, Nobler National Purpose

In these terrifying times, this moment of monsters, many are agreed that our primary concern must be impeding the march of authoritarianism, but it is my belief that a grander undertaking beckons us.

So touched is President Trump by the letter from Harvard University that he’s grown a third hand!

It is well known, mostly via the best-selling books of his niece Mary, that President Trump’s childhood was unhappy. His father, Fred, surely brutalized by his own father in boyhood, was demanding and cold. Where other pops of the era were coaching their sons’ Little League and, in selected areas, Pop Warner, teams, Fred was teaching his second son to be merciless, unrelenting, and unscrupulous in acquiring ever greater wealth and power. Mama, who in ideal circumstances might have taught young Donald kindness and empathy, was absent, having hemorrhaged after giving birth to youngest son Robert birth, received an emergency hysterectomy, and been hospitalized at length.

No child, not even the hijo or hija of some filthy, disgusting, diseased Central American fentanyl dealer and rapist trying to slither across our southern border should ever have had to endure such an upbringing. It’s hardly surprising that young Donald grew up to be a heartless, petty, vainglorious, vengeful asshole whose sole interests are self-glorification and self-enrichment, his soullessness never allayed, his terror of being something less than his monstrous pater wanted him to be never placated. He does crazy shit that jeopardizes everyone everywhere because it gets him attention, and js one of those poor warped sons-of-bitches for whom any attention, however negative, feels validating. (I know this feeling from the inside!!)

Manifestly, we can reasonably hope for him to acknowledge his deficiencies — as in accepting the counsel of those expert in the vast array of areas in which he is clueless — only when some small portion of his inner vacuity is filled. Nothing can be more urgent than that we all of us embrace as our national purpose making this good, good man — to borrow former Vice President Pence’s perceptive characterization — feel better about himself.

Do you suppose that he would have imposed his idiotic tariffs on Canada and Mexico if, earlier in the day, he had received a laudatory letter signed by all of Harvard’s poli sci department? “Just wanted to let you know we all think you’re a great guy, sir!”

I do not, and cannot be forced to.

The MAGAts can’t do it. He laughs at them. Hardly Dr. Stephen Hawking himself, he is nonetheless bright enough to recognize his base as populated by suckers, by mouthbreathing numbskulls and nincompoops, as turkeys whose incalculable gullibility has led them to vote for Thanksgiving being weekly, rather than annual.

It therefore falls to those of the educated and informed in the blue states — readers of books, staunch eschewers of Laura Ingraham and Jesse Waters, Blusky commentators and Substack contributors — to do the heavy lifting. Which, owing to his reported use of Ozempic, won’t be as arduous as in the past.

Let us begin!