Mr. Trump wants to make English the official language of the U.S. This seems odd; England is a foreign country. Shouldn’t our language be American? Making American our official language would give us the opportunity to make certain distinctions. Education in English might be foolishness here. Tyrant in English would be leader here, or perhaps savior. Tolerant should probably be woke. Even more usefully, we could use the occasion to specify some words and phrases that will henceforth not be used or translated at all in American. Reality-based is an annoying phrase; let’s chuck it. Democracy…. In the same way that we need Elon Musk and his boys to delete programs and fire people, we need someone to go through the English language and just get rid of all the words and phrases that aren’t needed in American. I nominate JD Vance, famous Yale scholar.

Eric Kuhn is a member of the class of 1979 and can be reached at ericwardkuhn@comcast.net.