Here's your burger, Pop. And a lesson, too.

Don't delude yourself into thinking your big talk is enough to combat Trumpism

It was the bartender who jolted me to reality. But the burger was mighty good. (Photo by Mike on Unsplash)

---

The concept of the modern sandwich, we are told, developed in 18^th century England, when John Montagu, the 4^th Earl of Sandwich, an habitué of gambling tables in public houses, ordered his valet to bring him a slab of roast beef between two slices of toasted bread, leaving the Earl one hand free for his cards and dice and the other available to eat dinner without fork or knife. Portability and easy consumption thus have defined the sandwich from its origin.¹

Which is why the purported sandwich served to me the other day at a pub I hadn’t visited in some decades was an exercise in unreality: It was too big to be grasped by anybody with hands smaller than Michael Jordan’s, or to be eaten by anyone with a mouth smaller than Popeye’s. It was a giant, vegetable-adorned, bacon-laden hamburger with melted cheese — and, yes, since you asked, pursuant to a 2019 ruling of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, a hamburger is indeed a sandwich, as are wraps, burritos and bagels (the latter only when “served buttered or with spreads, or otherwise as a sandwich,” but apparently not when purchased whole).²

I had gone to a place in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District called the Corner Bistro, a little bar that I recalled happily from my 20s, when a mini-review by Mimi Sheraton in The New York Times described it as “a dark, relaxed taverny neighborhood hangout.” Back then, I could barely afford the extravagant $2.90 tab for the big burger. Even at seven times that price, it did not disappoint now, 45 years later. But the nostalgic lunch came with an ego blow on the side: As the friendly bartender slid the plate onto my table, he said, “Here you go, Pop.”

Who, exactly, was he addressing? Are you telling me that it’s OK for a middle-aged bartender — with, let it be said, markedly less hair than I have — to call me by the name that belonged to my father? Just then I was wishing for nothing so much as a sweet “Hon” from a diner waitress.

Yes, I recognize my biological age, though I prefer to view it with the perspective of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a contemporary of the 4^th Earl of Sandwich, who wrote, “The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.” In my imagination, you see, when I walk into a room — even a taverny hangout in New York City — people might look up and think, “Seems like a nice young man.” Let a guy dream!

Yet imagination, too, has its limits, making reality often a cold splash to the face. I wake up every morning wishing that I lived in the America that has been part of my imagination since I was a little boy singing “God Bless America” while gazing up at Mount Rushmore — a nation, that is, that projects the values of freedom and self-determination to the world, that works to deliver equality for all under fairly applied laws, that elevates to its leadership only individuals who strive to display the character of history’s greatest figures.

That’s not our America right now, and wishing for it won’t make it so. And here’s the thing: We all need to accept the reality of what’s required of us to make that imagined place our home. Waiting for the next election — or imagining that we’re participating in the solution by complaining about the status quo — is an inadequate response to what’s at hand. There’s work to be done, folks.

Among students of western history, Napoleon Bonaparte is remembered for both military conquests and lasting reforms. As the ruler of France, he created a system of higher education, a central bank, a civil code and even, for its time, an enviable road and sewer system. But we remember him especially for his leadership skill, a task that he defined as this: “The role of the leader is to define reality and give hope.”³

By any fair measure, Donald Trump’s approach to leadership is based not upon defining reality, but defying it. He lies expansively, even eagerly — claiming, for instance, that the tariffs he has ordered will be paid by foreign governments rather than American consumers, that the rioters he sicced on the Capitol in 2021 were participating in “a day of love” rather than insurrection, that Ukraine and not Russia started the war in Ukraine, that China is operating the Panama Canal. He is exercising power without congressional authorization by falsely claiming that Venezuelans are participating in an “invasion” of the U.S., that decades of trade with other countries present such a threat that he can impose massive tariffs on an emergency basis, and that our “national energy emergency” — in fact, we’ve never produced more energy — allows him to revoke by decree federal environmental and health laws.

Indeed, there is so much distance between truth and Trump that the preceding paragraph had no logical end; I cannot here recount the 30,573 false or misleading statements that The Washington Post counted during his first term, nor the tens of thousands since.⁴ Here’s a fun fact: Wikipedia has a separate entry for “False or misleading statements by Donald Trump” that carries a warning at the top: “This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably.” It goes on for about four dozen pages, including 605 footnotes, and features a sentence that editors of the multi-volumed encyclopedias of old couldn’t have imagined: “It has been suggested that Trump’s false statements amount to bullshit rather than lies.” Whatever.⁵

In fact, much of Trump’s second term has been focused on attacking key institutions of American society, because that tactic yields the sort of chaos that makes a society ripe for an authoritarian leader. It isn’t to stop antisemitism that Trump is trying to hobble higher education; it’s because our colleges and universities are a force for stability and reason, attributes that pose a threat to the reality-challenged Trumpian rule. He isn’t gutting the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Institute for the Humanities to save tax dollars; he’s not attacking the scientific establishment, gutting research into cancer treatment and childhood diseases and hobbling the National Park Service because he wants kids to get sick and wants to let cancer run free, or he hates nature.

No, he is doing all that because those are institutions that hold order in our society. It is in disorder that tyrants can arise and thrive. Trump needs chaos to survive.

Many of us who are horrified by the Trump presidency can’t quite imagine why people continue to follow someone with such a record of deceit. Some of it can be explained because people are left in darkness if their media diet is made up of platforms that provide only a slender account of what Trump is really up to — if, for example, they watch Fox News or One America News (OAN), the Trump propaganda outlet that he has decided will be carried worldwide by Voice of America. Politicians in the Republican Party that he now fully controls follow him because it’s the path of least resistance toward their ultimate goal of holding onto their jobs. (I have reached this notion slowly and reluctantly; I hate to infer such bad character in public servants, but facts dictate the conclusion.)

Yet there’s a reality check needed, too, among those of us who aren’t Trump fans. We need to understand our present responsibility, and not turn ourselves into caricatures of the resistance. We have to face what’s real and act upon it.

There remain some 1,350 days until Trump leaves office, presumably — too long a timeframe for the delusion that we’re doing our part by posting snarky anti-Trump comments on social media, or telling like-minded friends and relatives how upset we are, or by nodding along as people on radio and TV programs criticize the Trump era, or even by waving signs in an anti-Trump demonstration. In response to what’s really happening, we need to act. And our action is most likely to be successful if it’s done in support of an institution that reflects some of our fundamental values.

Here's an example: My recent encounter with the Bistro Burger happened because I was in the city to attend an alumni event at Columbia University, a prominent battlefield in the MAGA campaign against American institutions. As the head of the Alumni Board at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, I heard in recent weeks from alumni who wanted to demonstrate against the university — to burn their diplomas, perhaps, or disrupt the dean’s presentation — to protest Columbia’s response to the Trump administration stripping of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts and aid from the university. That struck me as a terrible idea.

Joining in the attacks on institutions in Trump’s crosshairs because we disagree with their calculated survival strategy would be precisely the wrong way to stand up to the demagogue. I don’t know what the right steps might be for Columbia or Harvard or other MAGA targets; I do know, though, that the real work of combatting Trumpism comes in standing up for the institutions he would tear down.

The noted Yale historian Timothy Snyder some years ago published On Tyranny, a slender volume of mini-essays on 20^th century history.⁶ It puts forward an argument that is now sharpening my focus for what I will do in these coming three years and eight months. “It is institutions that help us preserve decency. They need our help as well,” he wrote. “They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning.”

Snyder, incidentally, has taken a leave from Yale and moved with his wife to Canada, rather than stay and watch at close range what he perceives as our nation’s slide into fascism. I’d suggest a better course for most of us is to stay and fight.

Reading Snyder, though, gave me this dose of reality: I need to pick an institution that matters to me — or maybe more than one — and do something to sustain it. Many of the programs and institutions we value are at risk in a society that is undergoing economic and structural tumult. So I urge you to make a similar reality check on your intentions.

Like this: If you value public education, work for good local school board candidates, and don’t let the MAGA forces pull books off the shelves. If you care about the arts, donate to your local symphony or choral ensemble or theater troupe. If you don’t like the manipulation of facts to fit right-wing narratives that characterizes Fox News, do whatever you can for your local public radio and TV outlets.

Volunteer at food pantries; the Trump administration has cut $1 billion in aid to anti-hunger groups.⁷ Help the local organizations that support at-risk youth; Trump is shuttering Head Start programs and laying off workers who have overseen child care, child support and child protective services systems.⁸ Give money — even a few bucks — to your favorite college or university; it’s not just the big-name schools that are getting whipped by Trump-drunk Republicans.⁹

What’s going on now in America is heart-breaking for many of us. But averting our gaze — that is, for any more time than we need to sustain our emotional health — is a retreat from our responsibility as citizens. We can convince ourselves that our quiet resistance is sufficient, or take pride in our clever or noisy pushback, online or in public, but the notion that we’re then doing enough is no more realistic than my delusion that the guy bringing me a burger and a beer won’t notice my white hair. It’s possible that I’ve aged a bit, and that we need to do more than complain.

No, we need to meet the unreality of Donald Trump’s assault on our institutions and norms by accepting the reality that we have some serious work to do. Our key institutions won’t protect themselves, nor will our democracy. Really, it’s our job.

1. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-18010424

2. https://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/tg_bulletins/sales/b19-835s.pdf

3. https://www.xminstitute.com/blog/amex-ceo-insights-from-napoleon/

4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump#cite_note-WashPostDatabase-1

6. https://timothysnyder.org/on-tyranny

7. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/us/politics/food-banks-trump-cuts-aid.html

8. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-trump-budget-cuts-harm-kids-child-care-education-abuse

9. https://www.aauw.org/resources/news/media/press-releases/100-days-of-the-trump-administration-a-relentless-assault-on-higher-education/

---

TRAINING

DO YOU WANT TO LEARN TO WRITE OP-EDS?

If you’d like some training in writing opinion essays — for newspapers, audio or digital platforms — check out the live 90-minute class Rex co-teaches that is offered by Marion Roach Smith’s global platform for writing instruction, The Memoir Project. Click below for information on our upcoming schedule of classes.

Our next class is Monday, May 13, at 4:30 p.m. Eastern

Lots of our students have been well published — and you can be, too!

---

BONUS CONTENT

GET MORE FROM THE UPSTATE AMERICAN

IF YOU’D LIKE TO HEAR MORE from Rex Smith, check www.wamc.org for his weekly on-air commentary aired by Northeast Public Radio. Here’s a link to the latest essay.

AND IF YOUR INTEREST IS SPECIFIC TO AMERICAN MEDIA, you can download the podcast of The Media Project, the 30-minute nationally-syndicated discussion that Rex leads each week on current issues in journalism. In the seven states where Northeast Public Radio is heard, the program airs at 3 p.m. each Friday and is rebroadcast at 6 p.m. Sunday. You can tune in live, too, at www.wamc.org, or get the podcast there. It has been called “a half-hour of talk about finding and telling the truth.”

---

No grudge held about the recognition of my age: This is a swell place for a beer and a burger. (RS photo)

---

ENDNOTE

THANK YOU for reading The Upstate American, and for joining us in the conversation about our common ground, this great country. As we together navigate these challenging times, I hope you’ll join us again next week — or send me a message with ideas you’d like to see us address.

-Rex Smith