Last Boys at the Beginning of History

“When Trump became the Republican nominee, conservative people, especially conservative young people, found themselves in the position of our peers attacking him by proxy through attacking us. There’s a line Trump used—‘they’re not going after me—they’re going after you, I’m just in their way.’ Young men experienced that almost in reverse a lot of the time, when people who were our friends, who were our peers, would just relentlessly bully us, cancel us, harass us, physically assault us because of Trump.”
The authority figures on campus—the teachers, the chaplain—didn’t want to, or couldn’t, give guidance or even basic classroom instruction during Trump 1.0, so I turned away from the tyranny of the present political moment to the timeless classics: I chose to study ancient Greek. In my third semester, the professor frequently interrupted our close reading of the Iliad’s eighth-century Greek to try to relate the events of Troy to Trump’s latest political activities. I came away having read almost none of the Iliad; all I remember, truthfully, is forming half of a tiny audience for one male professor’s personal op-ed and therapy session.