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“In a 2020 podcast interview discussing the benefits of grandparents in children’s lives, J. D. Vance agrees when the host says, ‘That’s the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.’” — Vanity Fair

Sure, I might be a childless cat lady with a solid career as a quantitative analyst, but Senator Vance and a podcast host researching the theory of everything have helped me see the lack of meaning in my existence, so I’m applying to become your child’s surrogate grandmother, with my husband’s approval.

As someone who studied hard, worked late, and allowed myself to be interrupted more times than even I, a researcher, can count in order to get to where I am today, I understand your wife’s need to work, but in my role as your child’s surrogate grandmother, I would offer the added benefit of being a mentor and a model for what your wife can expect once she experiences menopause. I can also help her to see, as I do now, that the purpose of a woman’s life is far greater than a career.

There’s a lot of worship of intelligence in our society. Some of it is justified but much isn’t.

I’m reasonably intelligent: I’m at the level where I’m startled if someone is much smarter than I am; it doesn’t happen often.

But it does happen. There are people who make me feel stupid.

Intelligence is essentially two things: ability to perform mental operations, and speed of operation. A smart enough person can perform operations a less smart person can’t; can more swiftly learn how to do operations available to both, and processes faster.

Intelligence at its highest levels leads to polymaths: people who have mastered multiple subjects. All that speed matters.

Generally speaking, though, a smarter person will just get to the same conclusion a stupider person who knew the same things would get to faster. Think the kid at the front of class putting his hand up first.

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Early in President Trump’s term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, and crimes, and it felt urgent then to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. This election year, with the very real possibility of Trump returning to office, we know it’s important to be reminded of these horrors and to head to the polls in November to avoid experiencing new cruelties, collusions, corruption, and crimes.

All of us must play a part in lowering our nation’s political temperature. So I applaud Project 2025 mastermind Kevin Roberts for postponing publication to rewrite and tone down the violent rhetoric in his forthcoming memoir, Dawn’s Early Light: Burning Down Washington to Save America (with a foreword by J. D. Vance), I’ve decided to follow his lead by making similar edits to my forthcoming book, ROCKET’S RED GLARE: Embracing the Cleansing Fire of Patriotism That Will Burn Our Modern-Day Sodom to the Ground So That a New America Can Rise from the Ashes.

Because my memoir was sent to reviewers in its original form, then excerpted online (often out of context) to widespread and vociferous backlash, my publisher has asked that I publicly endorse these new revisions to show that I am “on board” and to “indemnify them” in case of what they described as “a 150 percent chance of litigation.”

I approve of all these changes, is something I’m contractually obligated to say here.