I nodded my head. We both knew what she meant. 

In my AP U.S. History class in high school, I learned about the term “bully pulpit,” used to denote a public office or authoritative position, often the presidency, that grants its occupant an exceptional opportunity to speak out on any issue. As a columnist for the Opinion desk, I am in a somewhat similar position. I have a platform. I can address any issue I would like. But this comes with a major caveat.

For better or worse, the News gets more attention than your average college paper. It is subject to frivolous criticism on Fizz just as much as it is subject to scrutiny from alumni, Ivy-eyed organizations and perhaps, at times, the federal government. In short, people in my position must constantly and conscientiously fulfill two roles: first, as a collegiate newspaper that sparks campus discourse about issues as mundane and trivial as what we see making its rounds on Fizz; and second, as an widely-read paper with a mandate to discuss big, serious issues. Issues that, in some cases, put our names and livelihoods in jeopardy.

As a student journalist, my writing must toe a fine line, between addressing first-year imposter syndrome at Yale to writing about the impact of wildfires on my native Los Angeles.

A slew of complicated mandates emerges: be serious, but not too serious. Wield rhetoric without being tacky. Be strong in your opinions, but qualify every word lest you offend somebody or hurt somebody else, or perhaps blacklist yourself from a job that you’ll want a decade down the line. Be prudent and judicious, yes, but also speak of controversy quietly.

Write so you can walk down the street safely.

The responsibility I hold is not necessarily of a dual nature, but it has drastically different levels of scrutiny. I knew that becoming a columnist for the Opinion desk would come with its fair share of criticism from my peers; in this business disagreement is a part of the game. But the firmness of my mother’s grasp told me she wasn’t worried about what my peers were critiquing on Fizz.

This powerful bully pulpit from which we speak may be more aptly named the Bullied Pulpit; we can affect change with our journalism, but the consequences of our words make us targets on campus and off, interpersonally and nationally. The gap between being perceived as an instigator rather than an initiator is a mere misstep. 

Journalism must of course be respectful, accurate and prudent in how it disseminates both truth and opinion, but there is a line between courtesy and cunningly contrived culpability. There is a difference between knowing better and knowing better given circumstances that should not be.

In this world we live in right now, voicing a belief apparently requires caution. Doing so can be socially “dangerous” due to the scrutiny we face amongst peers online, but this has always been the case. What has changed is the scrutiny we face beyond campus. Exercising the power of our voices can be dangerous, legally and personally. Now more than ever, we must be smart about how we speak and careful about what we write. We must be aware of our audience, which may now include the federal government. Our job has become far more political. In this present world, we cannot forget that we speak from a bullied pulpit. We cannot allow ourselves to be the cost of outspokenness.

There is much to question and oppose. Answers to these questions and encouragements of these oppositions are begged during times when even the most opinionated fall silent. 

As a staunch advocate for candor, truth and advocacy in itself, I shudder to recommend self-censorship as a solution to this issue. But I would be wholly irresponsible to advocate for flagrant outspokenness when the threats we face are far more permanent and far more damning than normal backlash. Depending on the situation, education, citizenship status and familial livelihood could be at stake. I urge you to exercise caution. 

I cannot give you perfect guidance. Every case is unique, every person is different. I am once again reminded of my mother’s wisdom. The best advice I can offer you is what she told me: lay low for a while.

MIA GORLICK is a first year in Pierson College. Her fortnightly column,“Beyond the Headline,” explores all facets of life, micro and macro, mundane and major, that shape the lived experiences of the people that shape Yale. Through her writing, she gives words to the shared human experiences that lie beyond the buzzwords, and establishes a platform and forum where she can exercise the power of her own voice and in doing so, encourage and inspire others to do the same. She can be reached at mia.gorlick@yale.edu.

The post GORLICK: Half-truths from the Bullied Pulpit appeared first on Yale Daily News.

She is a devout Christian living in Connecticut, attending college in Tennessee. She goes to church on Sundays, she holds steadfast faith in God’s plan. On Jan. 1, 2025, she sent a text saying, “I hope you have the best year yet. May God protect you and bless you.”

She and I have spent the majority of our lives on opposite sides of the country. Up until a few months ago, we had never crossed paths. Our friendship is new, too new to be coddled by a time-developed tolerance stemming from years of closeness. We do not have a shared history that forces us into a state of mutual understanding. The nascence of our bond makes our friendship fragile; miscommunication and misunderstanding have the power to jeopardize it. 

And yet, as I saw these two messages sit side by side on my phone, I couldn’t help but smile and feel peace.

In a world rife with profound division and prejudice, it was so refreshing to see a small but deeply powerful representation of unconditional love. I was not offended by her religious verbiage. She was not offended by my lack thereof. I appreciated her message and understood its meaning as it came from her, just as she appreciated mine and understood its sincerity as it came from me.

One of the greatest pieces of wisdom I have received is, “Seek to understand before seeking to be understood.” Get to know the person sitting next to you. Learn to speak each other’s languages.

And by language, I mean ways of speaking. I mean religious allusions and secular verbiage. I mean slang, formal vocabulary and cultural references. Respect it all. Admire it all. Learn it all. Lean in to those conversations and try to speak the languages of your loved ones. Every person has a unique dialect no more important or correct than the other, and together, they shape a deeply human language.

We often expect the messages that come our way to be entirely and perfectly tailored to us. We are quick to be taken aback when they are not directly attuned to our specific beliefs and backgrounds. We forget that there is a sentient writer behind them, an individual with completely different perspectives and worldviews that influence their language. 

How different would our world be if we interpreted messages as beautiful reflections of their senders rather than offensive attacks on their recipients?

I am beyond flattered that a young woman with such closeness to her faith and her God took time out of her life to intentionally share that love with me. I am moved that she was not only willing, but eager to bring me into her world in a way that demonstrated tolerance, respected boundaries and still fostered a connection, opening both a door and a dialogue.

She and I are learning to speak each other’s languages. We are leaning in to better communication defined by mutual respect and an understanding and appreciation of our differences. Whether you wish to call it evolving as humans, tapping into our personhood, righting ancient wrongs or rebuilding from the devastation of the Tower of Babel, this small moment gave me hope and brought me joy.

In every situation, we have the opportunity to grow as people and citizens of the world, or we may choose to feel overly offended by someone wishing us a “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.” We can decide to expand and evolve, or we can decide to self-stagnate and collectively regress. Every day, every moment that we are breathing, we have the freedom to make this choice. 

In this year and all those that follow, I choose to learn these languages that my friends and loved ones speak. Taking the time to truly know another, and to assign value and meaning to their words by first embracing their unique personhood, is to me one of the greatest and purest forms of respect. Whether we choose to call it brotherly love, goodwill, compassion or fellowship, rebuilding from Babel requires embracing our diversity while celebrating our shared humanity.

And humanity is a language I believe all of us speak.

MIA GORLICK is a first year in Pierson College. Her fortnightly column,“Beyond the Headline,” explores all facets of life, micro and macro, mundane and major, that shape the lived experiences of the people that shape Yale. Through her writing, she gives words to the shared human experiences that lie beyond the buzzwords, and establishes a platform and forum where she can exercise the power of her own voice and in doing so, encourage and inspire others to do the same. She can be reached at mia.gorlick@yale.edu. 

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It is for this reason that I proudly — and also a bit sheepishly — own that I’m an alarm girl, accustomed to receiving incredulous stares and side-eyes as I jump at the sound of my phone screaming at me multiple times throughout the day.

One might assume that I have become desensitized to the incessant, bizarrely passive-aggressive tones that dictate my every move. One might assume that I have learned to transcend, spiritually and auditorily, these jarring jingles. 

On the contrary, however, I have never been more hyper-aware of every single sound I hear. A few days ago, I physically started at the sound of an alarm ringing from across the room of my 400-person macroeconomics lecture. To say I am a tad bit over-sensitive to these sounds is a grand understatement.

My life has been reduced to alarms, alarms and more alarms. They tell me when it’s time for my game theory lecture. And my club meeting. And my lunch. And my 28-minute nap that is actually 27 minutes because I wake up early in anxious anticipation of my alarm. It seems that so much of my internal world is ruled by internal and external clocks. Snoozing or skedaddling, studying or snacking, I am on a constant, hypervigilant watch.

Organized plans are wonderful, but I do not want my schedule to be so rigidly bound to my prattling, attitudinal phone. How can I seize the day when my alarms only allow for a fifteen-minute seizing window from 4:00-4:15 p.m.?

It was during such a moment of lamentation and introspection that I came to reflect on other mundane yet meaningful aspects of my world. In addition to being a Clock app enthusiast, I am a Los Angeles kid who didn’t travel much growing up. Prior to attending Yale, I had never experienced snow.

So on this one day in mid-January, when I looked out my frosty L-Dub window at 8:30 p.m. and saw fresh, falling snow blanket branches and benches across Old Campus, I made a radical decision: I stopped living by alarms; I put my spinning world on pause; I donned my coat; and I ran outside.

I texted many of my friends, asking them to come outside with me. They said they’d meet me at midnight, the designated start time of the First-Year Snowball Fight. Now, as I’ve said before, I’d never interacted with snow prior, but I had a feeling that now was the time to embrace this experience. I trusted my intuition. 

And I am so glad I did.

I spent hours running around Old Campus with some fellow L-Dub dwellers, laughing and tossing snowballs back and forth. After so many months of attempting to grow up and learn how to adult, I loved every second of just being a kid. There is something incredibly liberating about being hit smack in the face with a heaping handful of snow.

Some of my friends never made it to the event. Others, as promised, came at midnight. I don’t blame them for having other priorities; we all must do what’s best for us. But as someone who experienced this snowball fight as a milestone and a first, it makes me sad to think that so many people had missed out on an experience I will always treasure and view as a defining moment of my first year at Yale. It makes me sad to think that we live lives that are so rigidly dictated by our calendars and alarms and agendas and planners and schedules.

I know my alarms will go off like clockwork — literally. I have thousands more opportunities to hear my phone yell at me to switch tasks. But moments and memories are fleeting. Their occurrence, let alone reoccurrence, is never guaranteed.

By midnight, there was no snow left.

Did I miss out on a few hours of study time? Yes. Did I thereafter struggle with a mini existential crisis wherein I agonizingly questioned my academic dedication given my wintry shenanigans? Oh, yes. Would I change a single moment? No. Not in a million years. Hitting pause and forgetting about all those alarms might have been my greatest wake-up call.

MIA GORLICK is a first year in Pierson College. Her fortnightly column,“Beyond the Headline,” explores all facets of life, micro and macro, mundane and major, that shape the lived experiences of the people that shape Yale. Through her writing, she gives words to the shared human experiences that lie beyond the buzzwords, and establishes a platform and forum where she can exercise the power of her own voice and in doing so, encourage and inspire others to do the same. She can be reached at mia.gorlick@yale.edu.

The post GORLICK: Embracing un-scheduling appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The winds reached over 90 miles per hour. Our windows, locked and bolted, blew open in the middle of the night. Our phones blasted post-apocalyptic alarms sounding evacuation orders. The world smelled scorched. We walked outside and couldn’t breathe. We kept our heads down. To my left, the sky was a burning orange; to my right, I could see nothing but smoke.

I went to bed on Tuesday night asking my father to confirm that he was safe. I woke up on Wednesday to dozens of texts from loved ones across the country asking me to do the same. I checked in with my friends; some were relegated to their homes, some had to evacuate their homes and some had family members made newly homeless. 

Misinformation and anger both easily spread. This disaster can be viewed in isolation as an event that disrupted primarily the rich and famous, but it would behoove us to not become so polarized. There are communities that cannot afford to rebuild, families that are forced to separate and live in different states, people who have lost their homeowner’s insurance, middle and lower class neighborhoods that have been reduced to burnt edifices, small businesses that are permanently closed, animals and children without homes. 

It is unsettling to be in this place where we cannot breathe, where we keep our heads down, whether it be from sickness or suffocating ash or even more suffocating fear. It is unsettling to anxiously go to bed waiting for one text and to wake up to an anxious dozen more, to watch homes feet away from the ocean fall to flames.

This moment in time is strange because it is tinged with feelings and behaviors I can remember on a somatic level from other periods of my lifetime. The cities look how they did during the George Floyd protests back in 2020. People are crying and holding strangers as their cities burn. The people look how they did during the peak of COVID-19 in early 2021. Everyone is wearing masks and keeping their eyes low, their voices muffled.

Once again, the news outlets are frenetic. Once again, professionalism has been overridden by unhideable devastation as networks broadcast raw grief. Over my lifetime, I have learned to determine the severity of a disaster by the degree of professionalism that remains intact onscreen.

Entire neighborhoods have become black, post-apocalyptic flatlands. California looks sick. Part of me wonders if this is indicative of a sickness brewing beneath this disaster. Part of me wonders if this is a mere ember in the burgeoning wildfire that is our national disintegration.

Politicians ill-favored in California, if not blaming Democratic leaders for their handling of the wildfires, offer little more than perfunctory thoughts and prayers. Preachers offer more action and less prayer than politicians. There is great pride and shame in being a nation where the masses run into flames to save each other, but we question whether “no costs barred” aid might be the same under the name of a different presidential administration. It saddens me that a natural disaster can be so unnaturally politicized.

I hate that a wildfire makes me think of politics.

In the wake of mass destruction and individual devastation, my mom told me how a beloved friend’s house, located in an epicenter of the fires, was somehow left unscathed. But when the woman opened her front door, she saw that it was ransacked by thieves. All of her precious belongings were stolen.

I hate that a wildfire makes others think of stealing.

And I wonder: have we not learned? Why do we add further fuel to this fire — both metaphorically and literally? This disaster has shown us that money does not save us. Wealth does not protect us. Status does not shield us. This event is catastrophic and socially significant because it is leveling. In making wealth, title and status secondary factors during a time of crisis, this event forces us to reconsider what is important.

I would hope that such a deeply human disaster eliminates room for inhumane action or hyper-political discourse, and yet even I am guilty of the latter.

Devastation has become a cyclical American disorder. This is not merely a one-off example of a natural disaster; this is a national pathology. A state in our union has cities covered in ash, and politicians use this event to advance their own agendas — or to denigrate their opponents’. A state in our union attempts to stave off city-spanning wildfires, and looters leverage the turmoil, panic and pandemonium to steal frivolous, nonessential goods.

Where there is preexisting crisis, there seems to be a tendency toward opportunistic harm. 

I have been on this planet for 18 years. I have spent my whole life living here. I have lost count of how many times I have experienced this feeling that I have right now. This feeling of desperation and grief riddled with hope and unity, marred by cynicism, inflamed by defiance. 

Despite all of the destruction, I am moved by the love and courage that brought people together, that transcended city lines and wealth gaps and race and gender to remind us that we all bleed red.

As devastating as this time may be, it has also revealed to me some of the most beautiful aspects of humanity. I am watching people across my state build from wreckage, embody the change they wish to see and bleed and grieve and give as one. We cannot deny that the physically leveling force of this catastrophe destroyed so much — homes, businesses, bonds, histories. But the endurance of humanity in conscientious community leaders and fearless citizens tells me that these things, while absolutely important, are not even remotely paramount because, at the end of the day, that’s all they are — things. Times like these remind us of the power that is intrinsic to us as human beings, the power that requires nothing more than us. I hope you feel it. I hope you wish to seize it. 

Moments like these spark recognition and remembrance. They remind me of my intrinsic drive to generate a positive change on this planet while I am still breathing. They inspire me to inspire you to generate a positive change on this planet while you are still breathing.

We hold different views on what exactly the legacy of these fires will be. But we all can see its destructive force. Rather than divide ourselves along party lines, play blame games or argue over whose experience is worse, why don’t we use our shared understandings of grief and hardship to show compassion? This affects all of us, blue and red, high and low-income. We have an opportunity to unite against a disaster, rather than allow that disaster to divide us.

And so I ask you: will you be the looters hiding behind the flames, or will you be the good Samaritan who perseveres in spite of, indeed, because of them?

The choice is yours every single day.

MIA GORLICK is a first year in Pierson College. She can be reached at mia.gorlick@yale.edu.

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College application advice all too often sounds like a scholarly rendition of America Ferrera’s “Barbie” monologue: do a lot but not too much, show channeled dedication but be good at everything, have direction but don’t be pigeonholed, embrace failure but avoid failing, excel academically but take the time to cultivate yourself as a full human. 

Despite the dizzying paradoxes and the deluge of advice that ultimately said so little, you did it, you toed that line and cleared those enigmatic hurdles. The people sitting at that sacred envisaged admissions roundtable nodded their approval and enthusiastically exclaimed, “yes!” 

But wait a moment before you barrel forward in pursuit of achieving the next calculably inconceivable feat. Meeting and surpassing these invisible metrics does not mean you have mastered them. One cannot master that which they do not know, and one cannot know that which is intentionally kept from them. 

You jumped so high to clear the bar, but you never knew just where that bar rested below you. Did you exceed it by a mile? Clear it by a millimeter? You can view your admissions profile, but do you even want to know? Uncovering the exact truth, knowing where you objectively stand, doesn’t eliminate intrinsic insecurity. Discovering that you far surpassed the bar creates pressure to effortlessly do it again. Discovering that you barely made it at all generates a dangerous inferiority complex. 

These are the thoughts that keep us awake at night, fueling self-doubt and fostering ambition, fomenting intolerance toward failure.

Being here is an incredible testament to you. Mathematically speaking, your unique variables plugged into the equation perfectly. I wholeheartedly believe — and I hope you do, too — that you deserve to be here. 

But you must remember: you did not discover or derive the elusive, all-encompassing Success Formula. You cannot hold yourself to the rigid notion that, “If I did it once under X circumstances, I can do it again under Y circumstances.” In the case of college admissions, you possessed one suitable key for a viciously volatile lock. 

We equate achievement with mastery, and mastery implies the ability to generate predictable outcomes. However, surpassing the bar, meeting these invisible metrics, is a game of intertwined skill and fortune. Prior successes do not yield future guarantees but we often require ourselves to sustain an exponential achievement trajectory, forgetting that it is swayed by influences beyond our control. 

Rather than hold ourselves to the impossible standard of consistent outcome achievement, we must recalibrate our conception of our relationship to these metrics of success. We are not the masters of these invisible standards, the sole determinants in this complex formula of acceptance or rejection. Our attainment of success is not contingent upon a linear “If I do X, I will achieve Y” process.

This is especially true in this environment of fellow statistical outliers and insurmountable feat undertakers. In a hotbed of seemingly infinite candidates and definitively finite space, rejection is inevitable. And this is not at all a reflection of you or your worth.

It is painful to accept when your all isn’t enough, and even more difficult to remember that your all is not you. Most of you reading this assign great value to what you produce; in truth, it probably helped us all get here in the first place. But we are not the work we submit, the A’s we earn or the clubs that accept us. We are not the stumbles we make, the F’s we earn or the clubs that reject us.

We feel less than everyone else, yet simultaneously cheated out of what we deserve. We wonder how we could have possibly failed that exam or been rejected from that club when we got ourselves here, to this place of impossibly high entry hurdles and invisible, almost — but not quite — unmeetable standards. 

It is so absurdly easy to fall into a state of imposter syndrome at Yale. And rather than remember that we got ourselves to this place, rather than hold that as a beacon demonstrating what we can achieve, we question whether we belong here. 

My mother always tells me, “The most important thing you can have is perspective.” She’s right. Look around you, at all of the incredible people existing in your wildly enriched world. You are one of them. You met those invisible metrics with grace and drive. It’s what got you here. 

You do not have to prove anything else. You intrinsically possess that unique ability to clear hurdles into oblivion as you become all that you undertake. If you want to meet and exceed the next set of invisible metrics, continue being you. You possess the talent but you must relinquish the belief that you control the situation and its outcomes. And when — not if — we have setbacks in the future, we must remember that they do not constitute failures on our part or reflections of our value.

I will leave you with a much more manageable rendition of the “Barbie” monologue: feel deserving, but never entitled. Be ambitious, but give yourself grace. Most of all, get to know you, beyond the producer facet of your identity. If that was the sole aspect of who you are, you wouldn’t be here. 

Go back to that orientation day early in your Yale career, when the dean of your college told you, “Yale does not make mistakes.” Remember that?

Remember that.

MIA GORLICK is a first year in Pierson College. She can be reached at mia.gorlick@yale.edu.

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This might be the most exhausting and exhausted question of the 21st century. It pervades political debates and collegiate seminars, tabloid magazines and gratuitously profound elementary school recitals. It is impossible to measure superlatives of such a grand scale or to form a metric by which we can determine the absolute first priority on the infinite laundry list of world repair.

It is unethical to compare the casualties of war to the deaths caused by famine, crime or poverty. It is equally unconscionable to subordinate systemic racism to institutionalized sexism, or to prioritize climate change above educational disparity or housing inequality. 

And yet, in an environment of instant gratification and finite consumer engagement, all of these issues are vying for the top spot on our feeds, daily news debriefs and live interactions. Every moment, we are called upon to decide what takes absolute precedence. 

Pressing issues are spun into hyperbolic headlines, with every problem preceded by the words “most,” “worst” or “least,” if not modified by the adjective, “unprecedented.” Often, they possess some convergence of all of these descriptors. 

Given this exaggeratedly pessimistic culture, it is no wonder that we live in an overwhelming state wherein everything is everywhere and the worst it could be, all at once. The constant bombardment of crisis and catastrophe has made us numb to our reality. 

If everything is somehow the worst, at what point is it all meaningless?

My hopeful answer is, never. We cannot allow this ceaseless barrage to weaken our resolve. 

I began this article by asking you to reflect on the greatest problem confronting us today. I chose my words carefully. While “greatest” may be defined as the largest or the most substantial in size and scope, “greatest” also means the best —  in this case, the best problem to have because inspiring people one at a time is far more feasible than fixing the entire planet and all of its shortcomings.

The greatest problem facing our world is not mass hunger or poverty. It is not climate change or racism or prejudice or war or terrorism. It is one, six letter word, more influential and leveling than all of these factors combined. It possesses profound destructive power, but its remedy could fundamentally change the trajectory of our world.

Apathy.

How many times have you felt motivated to make a change, to make a statement or join a movement or channel your conviction into something constructive, something that generates change? How many times has somebody killed your excitement by asking, “But do you think that will actually do anything?” 

Apathy is the reason why every “worst” has made little progress toward “better.” 

We base our decisions on what we should do, all too often disregarding what we could do. We choose jobs based on the salaries we think we should be earning, not the issues we feel a drive to resolve. We add our names to petitions only when everyone else does. In an age of instant gratification caused by social media, we don’t tolerate slow progress because we do not believe change is possible unless it is instantaneous and grand. 

Belief is the first step toward affecting change, whether that be in the form of combating global warming, starting a small business or writing a new YDN article. We must lead with the understanding that beyond the arbitrary demographic barriers we impose, we all bleed red. Belief is a necessary prerequisite for improvement and positive change. It drives us to become the best versions of ourselves and create an environment that reflects such; contrastingly, apathy stagnates progress and fosters unbelief in our collective and individual power.

Imagine a world in which all of us cared about something. Imagine what we could achieve if our personal convictions were supported rather than dismissed and classified as “unfeasible” or “a waste of time” or “unrealistic.” 

Staggering urgency dominates our world. Ten thousand sources will tell you that the world is ending, and even more concerningly, they will all identify a different culprit. It is unfathomable and unsustainable to live in a state of constant technological and physical doom-scrolling. 

Rather than overwhelm yourself with the world’s problems to the point of apathy and stagnation, I urge you to do something. Start that company. Join that group. Write that book. Find a cause or a movement or an idea that excites you, and learn about it. Care about it. Encourage others to do the same, and if they don’t, use that as further fuel for your ambition. Above all, speak — not because somebody tells you that you should, but because you can and because your voice and lifetime are precious. I will not ask you to compromise your health and sanity caring about every single problem, minute and major, micro and macro, that affects all who draw breath on this planet.

I simply ask that you care about one thing: caring.

MIA GORLICK is a first year in Pierson College. She can be reached at mia.gorlick@yale.edu.

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It is within this era-specific political rhetoric and culture that we find one of Donald Trump’s recurring outcries: the world is a witch hunt, all political opponents are enemies and accusers and — most significantly — he, Donald Trump, is the one true and tragic witch. 

Trump depicts his opponents as merciless, bloodthirsty and ultimately misguided persecutors, while he takes on the self-aggrandized role of the marginalized, bereft and misunderstood martyr whose steadfast adherence to saving his country has been viciously dismissed, attacked and maligned. 

It is easy to argue that Trump has nothing to do with witches at all, that his tantrums reflect his immaturity, his reasoning lacks reason and the term “witch hunt” simply became a renewed buzz phrase following the Red Scare, now implemented to deflect his own ineptitude and culpability. 

There is great difficulty in conceptualizing similarities between accused witches of yore and Donald Trump. While the former were indeed marginalized, socially ostracized and multitudinously bereft, the latter possesses billions of dollars at his disposal, strong supporters, vetted personal legal teams and a manufactured, disingenuous air of superiority. On the surface, it seems that he has confused — or altogether disregarded — the distinction between being persecuted and prosecuted. 

But perhaps there is some truth to this superficially paradoxical comparison.

Let us take a moment to close our eyes and venture slightly north of New Haven, Connecticut, to Salem, Massachusetts, circa 1692. Religious piety and morality ostensibly reigned supreme, but fear, especially of that which could not easily be explained, presided above all else. Accusations of blasphemy and demonic possession took hold, often emanating from mere boredom or agitation. 

It is within this context that spectral “evidence” pervaded courts of law, the implications of which were horrific, destructive and deadly. Concisely, spectral evidence constituted an acceptable and admissible form of testimony in the 16th and 17th centuries, wherein witnessness, adults and children alike, claimed to have dreams or visions of the accused exercising evil, unholy powers over innocent members of society. In other words, dreaming that someone was a witch was sufficient evidence to sentence them to death.

Reflecting on Trump’s political history, one cannot help but recognize some striking similarities. But he’s not playing the role of the witch. His self-aggrandizement, narcissism and oftentimes malinformed rhetoric separate him from those that were wrongly persecuted. 

Donald Trump is the witch hunt.

Trump’s vitriolic insults and attacks hurled at his opposition in conventions, debates, interviews and social media posts too often seem like they’re coming from someone who does not live in the same physical or metaphysical reality as the rest of us. 

Just as Puritan witnesses of the 17th century might have unethically manufactured truth through visions and dreams, Trump attempts to turn falsehoods and fallacies into reality simply by uttering them. However, having a silver tongue does not constitute a sort of alchemy that spins golden truth from murky lies and misinformation. To him, simply professing an idea’s existence automatically concretizes its veracity. Herein lies what I call Trumpian spectral evidence: because Trump stated an idea, it must be accepted as truth simply because he said it. It cannot be refuted or questioned. He believes that the law should always be on his side, as it was for the accusers in Salem, Massachusetts.

Donald Trump has confused his role in this contemporary witch hunt. Long before he will ever be seen as the innocent martyr destroyed at the hands of fear and prejudice, he is the fear-monger and prejudice-instigator, the bored teenage girl and embittered woman, if you will, who believe they speak the truth simply because their lips are moving.

Yet despite this concrete reality, Trump continues to exist in his own spectral realm, believing that he is the persecuted victim in the case for which he is lead prosecutor. It takes a higher ability that many of us lack to self-reflect and recognize that we are, what we hate. It is only then that the employment of spectral evidence can no longer serve us, as we cannot believe what we know to be lies.

MIA GORLICK is a first year in Pierson College. She can be reached at mia.gorlick@yale.edu.

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