Jane’s had it with my Trump rants.

I can hardly blame her. I have too. He’s the last thing I want to be yammering about this morning.

I’m working on a piece I really like. It’s fresh, tugging me new places, long (for me) and requires concentration. I’m hoping you’ll like it, it’s what I want to be working on, and here comes Trump, abducting my attention, impressing my fingertips. If he were an inert offense – a monstrous structure, say – I could plot a course around him, to spare myself the affront. Out of sight, out of mind. Only he’s never out of sight. His fat face chases me – taunting, mocking – he pops into every conversation and headline like a deadly bubo – there’s no escaping him. Remember that playground contest “I’m the king of the castle, and you’re the dirty rascal”? If you walked away or, as Jesus urged, turned the other cheek, you surrendered your personhood, you were a loser, ha ha, a wuss, pathetic, a joke. Fight or acknowledge inferiority – those were your options. My irenic nature strove to avoid such thugs, but I didn’t want to be milk toast either; they’d ascribe my timidity to privilege – “poor little rich boy” – which was shame enough.

Ignore him, intimates advise. Easier said than done. The other day he reiterated – relentlessly – Trump never says anything less than thrice – America’s “a third world nation.” The absurdity of that contention stopped me, as we used to say, “dead in my tracks.” (How do idioms vanish from the ether? For another day.) If America’s “third world,” which nations occupy the upper ranks? China? Russia? Hungary? New Zealand (population five million)? Which would Trump’s addled acolytes elect for their place of exile? Am I supposed to dismiss such nonsense as “Trump being Trump”? This gloating goofball stands a fair chance of becoming – again! – misleader of the free world – and I’m supposed to shrug?

It’s not just the danger he poses that makes him ineluctable. His every jibe and gesture dares me to defend values I’m supposed to hold dear. It’s as if he’s asserting (as he would, if he thought it would get a rise out of me), “Your mommy’s a whore and your daddy’s not your daddy.” Do I just whistle that off or roll my eyes? If I’m unwilling to defend a principle, is it a principle at all, or merely a pointless pious hope? To sit out this tussle for America’s future (and the world’s) is to evince one’s indolence and betray a trust. If there’s no good you’d suffer for, why bother living?

Trump, in short, to change metaphors midstream, is pissing on my altar. I must shriek. But have I anything new to say? Maybe I’m perseverating, beating a dead horse.

Maybe. Only it doesn’t feel like it. This villain is yanking me to depths of determination and disgust I didn’t know existed inside my ambling insouciant nature. He’s declared war and, however feeble and unfit, I’m suiting up to do my bit in decency’s defense. I don’t want to, I resent it, I doubt I’ll do much damage pitching my pebbles, but if I don’t pitch in to hell with me. If I don’t give this war all I’ve got, what use am I? I’ll have become the contemptible worm Trump derides.

The good news about wars is they end. Sooner or later, enough blood has been let and a new haunted tranquility resumes. We rebuild from the ruins. We try to make sense. Survivors fumble for a new basis of being. A baby is born.