The Futility of the Pursuit
The Void Remains

ELIZABETH GEORGE
April 15, 2026

I My dad loved poetry. He read it to my brother and me when we were children. I can especially remember him reading Robert Frost’s poetry to us, particularly “The Death of the Hired Man” and “Mending Wall”. He also recited Shakespeare and poetry at the dinner table, and one poem has remained in my memory these seventy years on, eight lines written by Stephen Crane:

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;

Round and round they sped.

I was disturbed at this;

I accosted the man.

”It is futile,” I said,

“You can never—”

“You lie,” he cried

And ran on.

It is an ironic poem, pointing to the futility of self-delusion, and it hints at the consequences of refusing to accept the limits of the reality in which we as individuals live. Its theme is similar to that line from Looking for Love “I’ve been lookin’ for love in all the wrong places.” Looking, seeking, searching, pursuing, scouring every corner for that which is not available.

Were he not such a despicable human being, Donald Trump and his pursuit of a greatness that only he can define might arouse in us pity as he chases a distant prize that will remain always out of his reach. He is desperate to be deemed an illustrious president, equal to Washington, equal to Jefferson, equal to Lincoln, equal to Roosevelt, and far, far, surpassing Barack Obama, and he surrounds himself with golden objects intended to illustrate his colossal grandeur. But, as the days go on, he reveals himself as the man he actually is, a bottomless pit of need and an individual of demented evil comparable to such historic villains as Adolph Hitler, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot: men who murdered with impunity, men who committed genocide, men whose gifts to the societies in which they lived were torture, repression, famine, mass and illegal imprisonments, disappearances, murders, the starvation of children, the assault and rape of women, kidnappings, widespread disease…and the list goes on.

There will be nothing positive in Donald Trump’s legacy, despite the constant yearning inside him, which is the craving he faces every day to grasp with his hands that which is, for him, the absolutely unattainable: the admiration, regard, respect, and awe of the world. And he knows this although he will never admit it, for such an admission requires an understanding of self that would probably take decades for him to acquire. Unfortunately, he does not have that time. Unfortunately, the world is paying the price of his ignorance.
But still he strives, and as of this writing there are five potential indicators of the nation’s—if not the world’s—esteem that he seems to believe are his rightful due:

     1. He would like his signature to appear on all American currency henceforth.
     2. He would like his face to be the image on a 24K gold coin to be minted in celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
     3. He would like his visage to be on the obverse of a brand new $1 coin.
     4. He would like his face to appear alongside George Washington’s face on all National Park passes.
     5. He would like a 250’ Arc de Trump to be built in Washington DC, on a site to be determined later but near enough to the other monuments to great Presidents (the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Memorial) as to set himself among them.
What Trump doesn’t understand is that like the man in the Stephen Crane poem, he can never reach that which is unreachable for him. While Stephen Crane’s man futilely runs in pursuit of a horizon that continues to elude him, Trump seeks a greatness that is neither earned nor even possible for him. He does not understand that he is our nation’s Malvolio. He cannot see that the golden gifts, the vanity trophies, and the specious awards are not acknowledgments of his greatness but rather marks of the givers’ contempt for him, conferred upon him solely in the hope of gaining favor, like handing over the Nobel Peace Prize medal in exchange—she hoped—for his political support.
Trump cannot see that admiration is an outcome, not an essential. It is a consequence of something done. It could be something never before accomplished, like Lhakpa Sherpa, the Nepalese Sherpa woman who has climbed to the summit of Mount Everest ten times. It could be the overcoming of adversity like Helen Keller who learned to speak and ultimately graduated from Radcliffe College despite being both deaf and blind. It could be attempting the previously inconceivable, like Eliud Kipchoge who ran a marathon in under two hours. It could be a mindboggling act of heroism like that of Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector in World War II, who as a combat medic repeatedly crossed a battlefield on Okinawa to save the lives of 75 men, one at a time. It could be the refusal of a group of people to give up in the face of adversity: like the freedom riders of 1961 determined to put an end to segregation in the South, like the civil rights activists of the 60s demanding equality and a guaranteed right to vote; like the people of Minneapolis who refused to be cowed or provoked into violence by the masked thugs of ICE. It is people like these who garner our admiration. They do not demand it; they do not believe it is their due; they require no awards or monuments to avow their greatness. They do not crow about what they’ve accomplished. They simply are who they are, and the admiration of others is a consequence of what they’ve achieved.

Donald Trump does not understand this because he cannot actually see other people as individuals. He sees them merely as tools he might be able to wield in order to fulfill his needs. When he discovers that they do not possess the necessary wherewithal to serve him as he wishes to be served, to elevate him in the eyes of the world and to keep him elevated, he dispenses with them, without mercy and without a moment’s hesitation. He is a man who believes that the world into which he was born owes him everything while he himself owes that world nothing.

The uneasiness of spirit that he demonstrates in his late night rambling, incoherent texts as well as his AI generated images of himself in the guise of everything from Superhero to Jesus of Nazarus rises from the fact that he is slowly becoming aware that he does not possess nor has he ever possessed the stuff of greatness. He is proudly ignorant, a spineless bully. He hurls insults at people without realizing that each of the insults is an apt description of himself: little Marco Rubio, lying Ted Cruz, low-IQ Jasmine Crockett. He ludicrously refers to the Pope as weak on crime when there have been 525 mass shootings in our country since he—Donald Trump—took office for his second term. Indeed, he is truly a man of sound and fury that, at the end of the day, signifies absolutely nothing. He doesn’t know this, of course. How could he possibly know this and still keep functioning day after day? But know it he will. You can depend on that. Knowledge is coming, and it will arrive. Eventually. Ineluctably.

© 2026 Elizabeth George
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104