After more than five decades of reasonably virtuous living, I’m now told that I have betrayed my country and committed the ultimate crime.

I did not clap during President Trump’s State of the Union address.

Granted, my hands were otherwise engaged. They pounded my laptop’s keyboard as I frantically took notes: “clean coal,” “disastrous Obamacare.” And I’m limited in my appendages and much too clumsy to approximate applause with my feet.

But even if I could, I wouldn’t have. That’s not because I’m rooting against America. It’s because I’m rooting for it — and believe that we deserve better than a leader who uses language as sloppily and poisonously as Trump does, who reacts to every unwelcome message by smearing the messenger, and whose litmus test for patriotism is this and this alone: Do you worship me?

On Monday afternoon he visited a manufacturing plant outside Cincinnati, where of course he complimented himself, lavishly. He complained as he often does about the insufficient credit that he gets. He mused with audacious selectiveness about all the blessings he was bringing to us. No plummet of the Dow punctures his self-regard.