She Really Hated Donald Trump

I used to know a woman who lived in a Trump building in New York. She couldn't stand the guy. Because she was semi-famous, he kept trying to meet her and have his photo taken, but her attitude was that she paid her rent, and at her age, she didn't feel compelled to meet anybody she didn't want to—so she didn’t.

Everybody I knew from New York hated him. Beauty pageants, wrestling matches, and reality TV aren't highly valued among people who live there and work in legitimate arts and publishing. I never knew Paddy Chayefsky, but I’m deeply informed about his work, and I can’t really imagine him talking to anyone with a golden escalator.

Individual people usually don't, but the collective "the people" somehow respond positively to a living cliche. Being the star of programs most of us wouldn't admit we watched made Trump seem more legitimate than he ever actually was.

Fate is never kind. It's now my civic duty to learn about this guy who I otherwise would have just preferred to forget existed. I have pretty specific ideas about what I consider a "hero," but we're not in that neighborhood right now. I’ve known great men from New York. Donald Trump shouldn’t be in the same room with them.

I honestly believe the plan was to make Project 2025 so long and complicated that nobody would ever read it. It didn't work out that way. Last week, Project 2025 surpassed Taylor Swift and the NFL in Google searches. The people are informing themselves.

I don’t think Trump himself has particularly read Project 2025. I don’t think he reads anything much longer than a golf scorecard. He finds them useful, and they find him useful, and that’s the way that goes. The Heritage Foundation exists because there have been ambitious men in the GOP for the last fifty years who didn’t take the time actually to read what they were putting out.

George H. Bush wasn’t particularly a fan of theirs, but he saw how much they helped Reagan, so he went along to get along. George W. Bush evaluated men on a handshake, not by what they wrote. Sometimes, a handshake can tell you a lot. Sometimes, it can’t tell you very much at all.

I don't like think tanks, conservative or liberal. They're avenues where rich people can spend their money to manipulate the far less rich. There's one in Mississippi that gives me the hives. They hired a man from Uganda to try to pass legislation initially proposed by the Citizens' Council when I was a baby.

I’ve been pretty vocal about my feelings here, but, to be perfectly honest, most of Mississippi really wants much whiter schools and doesn’t really care how they get it. Personally, I’d rather our schools be free from political and cultural pressures from every side and let professional educators do the job they love the way they were taught to do it. Still, for some reason, most Mississippians are disinclined to trust teachers. I guess they’re holding a grudge about homework in the third grade.

It bothers me that the people giving this professional political thinker money are part of my tribe. The people on his board are also part of my tribe. They’re people I’ve known most of my life.

I'm not surprised, though. It can be pretty persuasive to tell somebody their ideas about the world are essential, and if they sign a check, we can make other people feel the same. Flattery is the key to raising money, no matter what you're raising money for.

There are some groups, the Community Foundation for Mississippi is one of them, whose goal is not to manipulate people's thinking but to provide them with the resources they need to develop their own agendas and goals. Trusting people to do the right thing if you help them is a huge step forward.

Pushing for cultural and political dominance almost always has negative consequences. Investing in people's vision and resources almost always has positive consequences.

I've known hundreds of people in politics. About six of them have opinions that I would consider before my own. Some of them, like William Winter and John Corlew, aren't around to ask anymore.

I would rather have someone in their 50s or 60s running for president, but the Democratic party is in a weird place right now. Unfortunately, the GOP is in an even weirder one. Both parties have become so invested in cultural dominance and building a winning team that they've forgotten about good governance.

Good government is mostly a matter of numbers: budgets, schedules, resources, transportation routes, Law Enforcement. You're borrowing trouble once you start using political office to push a cultural agenda. Culture is designed to function without governmental influence. Christianity is one of the largest cultural movements in our history, and it was created at a time when the government was doing its best to make it go away. Using the government to push a Christian Agenda is not only unnecessary for Christianity to work, but it also opens the door to subverting and twisting what Christ wanted from Christianity.

All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again. The cultural and political movements of my childhood, good and bad, have all returned, some with a vengeance. All you can do is remember the past and embrace the future.

34th Street Entrance of the Empire State Building