Trump isn’t the first president to celebrate his inauguration with a proclamation, though the one Trump issued has little in common with, for example, President Obama’s 2009 acknowledgment that “I am humbled by the responsibility placed upon my shoulders” and his admonition that “on this Inauguration Day, we are reminded that we are heirs to over two centuries of American democracy, and that this legacy is not simply a birthright — it is a glorious burden.”

Instead, Trump’s proclamation declared that “we are one people, united by a common destiny and a shared purpose,” in the formal language equivalent of closing your eyes, putting your hands over your ears and singing “Na na na na na” at top volume to blare out the resonance of the women’s marches that occurred this weekend. “There is no freedom where the people do not believe in it; no law where the people do not follow it; and no peace where the people do not pray for it. There are no greater people than the American citizenry, and as long as we believe in ourselves, and our country, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.”

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The idea that Trump, who is historically unpopular at this point in his presidency, who lost the popular vote and who won the electoral college in part because some of the people who voted for him felt as though they had little to lose, thinks of himself as the embodiment of “a new national pride [that] stirs the American soul and inspires the American heart” would be revolting if it wasn’t so sad and deluded.

But there is something afoot in the United States right now. And if Trump were to try to make a national holiday around himself, rather than merely recasting his inauguration as a celebratory occasion, there’s no reason to let a hypersensitive, bewildered man define patriotism, devotion and a word that’s very much absent here: service. If this becomes an annual occasion we’re supposed to mark — and I wouldn’t put anything past an administration that seems preoccupied with soothing its commander in chief’s ego –here are three ways to do it:

• Help immigrants: Eleanor Roosevelt, in a 1940 speech to the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, described the plight of an immigrant she met who was confused about what his rights were and too afraid to ask about the process of becoming a citizen.

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“Something was wrong with the spirit of America that an injustice like that could happen to a man who, after all, worked hard and contributed to the wealth of the country,” she said. “It should have been somebody’s business, first of all, to see that he learned the English language well enough to find things out for himself. Secondly, when he was in trouble, to fight for his rights and to tell him how to go about to remedy what was wrong. I felt there was something wrong with any community where you had to wait many months for a stranger to come to listen to your story and help you straighten out what was a manifest injustice.”

Given the anti-immigrant sentiments that helped propel Trump to office, a fine way to remedy the “spirit of America” would be to find a way to remedy the wrong Roosevelt described. There are programs that allow volunteers to train to be advocates for undocumented children who are in the United States by themselves and who often lack legal representation in immigration court. There are many programs that need people to volunteer to teach English to immigrants. If we believe that immigrants should be assimilated into American society, there are lots of ways to give them the tools to help them fit in.

• Support public schools: Trump’s nomination of Betsy DeVos to be education secretary has brought back debates over the best way to educate children and measure their educational attainment. But in the meantime, there are kids in school and teachers who are doing their best to educate them right now. It’s shameful that teachers have to crowd-fund classroom supplies, but meeting a teacher’s immediate needs can let them focus on educating their charges rather than rustling up equipment and materials. And what happens outside the classroom matters, too: volunteering to read with students, tutor them and mentor them, especially if you think your local public schools are in trouble, is a vital way to be neighborly. Waiting for policy questions to be resolved should never be an excuse that lets you avoid acting to fill an immediate need.

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