There [positively] will be doughnuts

Little more than 5 years ago, we raised the question of deferring the promise of doughnuts as risking a crisis of confi-dence in one of our culture's central tenets. At a certain point, a doughnut delayed begins to feel like a doughnut denied, and back then, the hour of 11:00 seemed to err decisively in that drastic direction. Now, it does not seem to go too far to say, we owe it to the Trump campaign to have identified the many for whom the tardy doughnut has begun to represent that very deprivation, per se, which we were not alone in dreading as an impression indistinguishable from the world as it palpably is. We should have seen it, written in their faces, long ago: eleven is simply too long to wait.

It's not enough to commend the rest of us, for somehow having mastered the art as well as the intent, of loitering for the doughnut shop to open. But it does seem to be the case, that great undiscovered pockets of society have never been filled with the range of interests which can transform frustration into a diverting if not wholly comforting contest. For them, water's only rain.

iii  Damon Winter
      The New York Times©