"As shown by the arc of my relationship with Jamie—and the many other Jamies who populate the New York writing scene—Trump is as much a symptom as a cause."

"His appearance in American politics coincides with a larger trend on the left that now serves to elevate every form of personal disappointment into a symptom of 'systemic' abuse. The result hasn’t just been that my erstwhile friends are afflicted with debilitating persecution complexes: It also has destroyed their ability to exercise independent thought. For free thought requires the free use of language, which is impossible when smart people like Jamie or Daniel are required to push the round peg of art and creation into the square hole of political sloganeering.... Is this process of submission—and the resulting discordance between ideology and one’s own authentic stream of thought—what drove my friends to states of miserable, anti-social agitation? I don’t know, because I am no longer in touch with either of the two men. I also have parted ways with my long-time girlfriend, who got swept up in these same currents, and who once literally wept in my presence because I had made a flattering reference to Camille Paglia."

From "Confessions of a ‘Soulless Troglodyte’: How My Brooklyn Literary Friendships Fell Apart in the Age of Trump" written under the pseudonym Lester Berg (Quillette).