The Trump Restoration

Some among us have a vague memory of a New York Times article years ago, written in a parodic vein, perhaps for April Fool’s Day or some other monde-à-rebours occasion, imagining a future, circa 2060, in which the Trumps have become Old Money, and have taken, like any clan with ill-gotten gains eventually does, to laundering their way into respectable society through philanthropy, sponsorship of symphonies and ballets, and so on. This scenario now seems more plausible than ever. Perhaps it will be young Barron’s children who make the full transition.

There are several other and very different prospects that are plausible as well, of course. On the 80,000 simulations our Editorial Board has run of the future, only about 30,000 of them have Donald Trump IV talking to the New Yorker — Series H (Holograph) about his passion for arts education. And these 30,000, we are sorry to say, are the happier ones.

There are those among the Democrats whose current stupefaction is anchored foremostly in the confounding thought that our president-elect is a convicted felon. Those of a more anarchist leaning on our Editorial Board would want to ask them: Do you know what states are? Do you understand that even the presidential seal took shape, in the rules of its composition, from the broad tradition of noble heraldry, which in turn adapted the motifs that had first been placed on the shields of medieval knights struggling, beneath their armor, to tell who was who? And our slogan —which we always thought was E pluribus unum but we just checked and apparently it’s “In God we trust”?—: do you know what that is? “Slogan” is a Scottish Gaelic term which, in the Norman French that usually dominates in that old art, is known as a cri de guerre. You thought states were just there to administer social security and repair roads? You forgot that what landed them with these responsibilities in the first place was an exercise of force? Please, please, don’t ever forget that again.