Ben Sasse Is Writing Another Book No One Asked For

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse is writing a second book, the Lincoln Journal Star reported Thursday, which will apparently be called Them: Why We Hate Each Other and How to Heal.

According to Axios, the book, which is slated for an October release, will be in the vein of J.D. Vance’s massively, inexplicably successful Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir that captivated guilty white liberal Baby Boomers browsing independent bookstores across the country:

From a forthcoming release: “Sasse argues that the problem is far deeper than politics or even any one politician. Across the nation, he argues, local communities are evaporating. The basic framework for everyday life — family, work, neighborhoods, friends, trust — is collapsing or, in the case of work, being vastly redefined.”

Sasse—along with fellow Republicans like Jeff Flake, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Bob Corker—is one of the self-appointed poster boys of “principled conservatism,” a concept with no definable center.

Sasse’s first book, published in 2017, was the clunkily titled The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis—and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance. The book made a great stocking stuffer for the dad/grandpa who already watches too much Fox News and likes to opine at length about young people’s lack of character today.

To people like Sasse, this all important “culture of self-reliance” never means asking Wall Street banks to take responsibility for single-handedly causing the economic recession by abusing homeowners or asking American huge corporations to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, rather than relying on multi-billion government handouts. No, Sasse insists, the most pressing problem facing America today is not giving children enough chores.

Sasse is a real-life Seymour Skinner: an incorrigible dweeb who thinks tut-tutting the Bart Simpsons of the world lends him moral authority. (Washington’s elite magazine writers, for their part, have fully bought into his act.)

The other thing worth noting about Sasse is that he has voted in favor of Trump’s agenda 88% of the time, including to confirm 21 out of 22 of Trump’s Cabinet appointments.