An Open Letter to Harper's

Regarding flatbed Fords

Dear sirs,

Having finished reading your December 2025 issue, I cannot say that I was thrilled to be lectured about “the West” by Pankaj Mishra, of all people. An external perspective can be welcome when, as with de Tocqueville, it is both thoughtful and thorough. Mishra’s piece, by contrast, is yet another example in what has become a land-office business of South Asian midwit malcontents earning a handsome and dollar-denominated editorial living via self-righteous bloviation regarding the unforgivable faults of a society they are nonetheless fighting tooth and nail to infiltrate en masse.

As an alien, Mishra’s evident and robust ignorance regarding American culture is as forgivable, if perhaps not as innocent, as Paich and Porcaro singing about Kilimanjaro’s prominence above the Serengeti. I have less patience for Dan Piepenbring’s review of Flat Earth, on page 71 of the December issue, in which he states “It’s clear as soon as he opens the flatbed of his F-250 that Avery will sleep with him, too.” An F-250 may have a tailgate which can be opened, as does my eggplant-leather-equipped, climate-obliterating, eight-ton-towing 2022 Platinum “Godzilla”, or it may have a flatbed, as does the Ford pickup described by Glenn Frey in the second verse of “Take It Easy”, but both things cannot be true at once. To put this in terms perhaps more comprehensible to your reviewer: it’s like saying “Avery had visited all five boroughs, and her favorite was Montauk.” Messrs. Mishra and Piepenbring would likely both benefit from picking some non-theoretical experience in the 97% of “the West” not served by a bodega.

That being said, the Brontez Purnell piece was better than good. I hope your staff has a lovely holiday season and continues to enjoy their heartfelt, albeit somewhat slacktivist, campaign to rid the world of the Jew, er, excuse me, the “Zionist”.

Sincerely,
Jack Baruth — Troy Township — Morrow County — Ohio