Ozymandias (aka Trump) vilifies the mainstream press so much because he knows the unfettered, uncowed written word is ultimately the greatest threat to his attempt to hold what he craves: absolute power. The familiar saying “The pen is mightier than the sword” became a proverb because it’s true. Today Michael Scammell cites a good example in noting Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. “Solzhenitsyn should be remembered for his role as a truth-teller,” Scammell writes. “He risked his all to drive a stake through the heart of Soviet communism and did more than any other single human being to undermine its credibility and bring the Soviet state to its knees” (“The Writer Who Destroyed an Empire,” The New York Times, 11 December 2018). The pen is mightier than all the lies Ozymandias can tell. While we are rightly alarmed at all Ozymandias and his cronies are doing and at the rude, primitive, reactionary impulses they represent, we ought not despair. Rather, we ought to persevere in holding to the truth and in proclaiming it boldly. Time is on our side.