There are times, as the Roman imperial poet Juvenal observed, when it seems impossible �not to write satire (difficile est saturam non scribere).� Yet such a temptation should be resisted. The point of philosophical-political analysis is neither to laugh nor cry but to understand. Satire, we might say, remains at a superstructural level of analysis, whereas what is needed is also infrastructural inquiry. This is especially the case with U. S. President Donald J. Trump. Paying too much attention to Trump�s authoritarian language, mannerisms, and tics � his �unbridled id� � is to miss his own foundational self-description as a builder.