I don’t get out much these days. There are two reasons for this: I have Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), and my husband and I live in the middle of nowhere, which is to say that there is nothing near enough for us to get to. We do, however, have televisions—plural, because Burke has games to watch, especially basketball and tennis. I turn on the TV in the bedroom sometimes even when I’m writing, although I don’t have it on at the moment. We have a couple of shows we watch—The Americans is terrific!—and Designated Survivor, because we are Kiefer Sutherland fans, even though we liked him better when he was defeating enemies and saving lives around the world. But mostly, in these traumatic days, I watch the news.

I was once in Trump Tower, the night it opened. I didn’t meet Trump himself, who was just a blank to me, and all I remember of this event (the opening) is seeing a famous literary figure—the head of a well-known publishing house—stuffing cocaine into his nostrils and sucking it up into his nose. I’d never seen anyone do this before; I was fascinated by the event, or perhaps I should say ritual. I admit I concluded that his ability to tell a good manuscript from a bad was likely impaired—assuming he actually read the manuscripts, and I think that’s doubtful.

I still have not met Donald Trump and I hope it never happens. He is, after all, a liar, a bully, desperately thin-skinned, and foolish. Foolish because he is poorly educated. He doesn’t read books; I doubt he even reads newspapers. Well, he did tell us that The National Inquirer is a factually correct device for finding out what is going on. He said this because the so-called newspaper had put him on their cover. What would be the point in meeting him? He wouldn’t listen to anything I said, nor would he care to know anything about me. He lives in the smallest of worlds and has even less communication with it than we in our isolated house do.

He has now established his team, the people who will serve him in his presidency. He must depend upon them because, despite his many “deals,” he knows very little. Very little of anything. How can someone who doesn’t read books know anything about the world? How much did he learn by dialing Taiwan? How much has he learned from Putin’s hackings? How much has he learned by tweeting?

Pretty much nothing.

And how much has he learned by doing deals in various countries? He has certainly learned about doing deals in those countries, but otherwise, he has learned—let’s all say it together—pretty much nothing.

Why do I think his lack of interest in reading is crucial? Not only because books inform us, though I am glad they do. Not only because books entertain us, though I am glad they do. Not only because books remind us of the beauty and power of writing, though I am glad they do. Books also teach us how to be human. They finely and delicately and forcefully demonstrate for us thoughts we have never thought or only barely thought. They teach us compassion and the need for it, illustrating the excitement of observation, the heartbreak and perpetual grief that occurs in every life, the gorgeous peace of serenity, the exhilaration of discovery. Yes, these experiences happen in people’s lives, and some people manage them and some don’t; but books instruct us in the details, the particularities of events, and thereby strengthen our understanding of love and loss, of being one and multiple, of feeling. They ready us for life and allow us to think on it. Even that publisher snorting coke in Trump Tower would have known this.

Watching our outgoing president presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to his outgoing vice-president, those of us in front of TV sets saw both men cry. That was an exalted moment. In that moment, we knew both men, Obama and Biden, were as human as ourselves. Neither struggled to outdo the other in any way. There was no bullying, only comradeship, two guys who had worked well with each other. There were no lies on their tongues nor any desperation. Neither did or said anything foolish, because both are grown men who are well acquainted with the world and unafraid to acknowledge their limitations.

And now we have this incoming president who knows nothing but “making deals.”

I would be glad to have a writer as a president, or a painter perhaps. I don’t think the best president is necessarily a politician. I’d be glad to have a business man who also reads, or listens to Beethoven’s string quartets.

But Donald Trump is so benighted that he doesn’t understand why some people cry. He doesn’t know what other people feel, what they go through. He can’t allow himself to feel his feelings of inferiority and is unaware that others feel their own. He can’t tell the truth and is unaware that others do speak truth.

How can a man without awareness run a democracy?