Dear World, we are sorry. We thought this jackass megalomaniac would only inflict pain on other people, on foreigners. We don’t like foreigners, even though we’re all descended from foreigners, so I guess we just hate that part of ourselves, but then fix that itchy little bit of introspection by waving a big flag and insisting that we’re always right and more free than anybody, kind of like a Super Big Gulp on sale for the 4th of July. Maybe we watched too much television. Maybe we should have insisted that we see Trump’s college transcript. Maybe we should have noted that his garbled syntax (which he couldn’t even manage effectively for the length of a tweet) might be a sign that his depth of thought might literally be exactly as presented in his words. How did we excuse his insults and crass self-aggrandizement? I guess we embraced his narcissism like a fuzzy and familiar part of the American fabric. It was a TV production and we love TV. We don’t read so much anymore. Who has the time? We’ve evolved from TV-worshiping couch potatoes to social media addicts who can’t see through blustery authoritarian tendencies. Sorry, World. We’d like to invite you to come teach us unfiltered and uncensored histories of authoritarian debauchery so we can detect the warning signs and restore our honor as a beacon of freedom and hope—but we chose a fast-food-eating, golf-playing, trust fund baby in orange makeup instead.