An unprecedented editorial, plus a reporter reveals border wall proposals.

What the Los Angeles Times undertook in its opinion pages this week is a thing of rare depth and beauty: a multi-part editorial that launched Sunday and ran three consecutive days in which the Times’ editorial board took a close look at Donald Trump, specifically on what they describe as three troubling traits: a lack of respect, a disregard for the truth and a willingness to repeat alt-right conspiracy theories.

In Sunday’s part one, titled “Our Dishonest President,” the Times wrote of the hopes that the Trump of the presidential campaign – “all noise and bluster” – would moderate his tone and behavior, surround himself with White House staff who could do that for him and “act as a check on his worst instincts” or that he would be sobered and transformed by the responsibilities of the office.

“Instead, seventy-some days in – and with about 1,400 to go before his term is completed – it is increasingly clear that those hopes were misplaced,” the Timeswrites, and adds, “It is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation.”

In part two, “Why Trump lies,” the Times points to Trump’s propensity to cry “fake news” when he’s called out for his lies. And the Times urges its readers to become citizen journalists in their own right: “Investigate. Read. Write. Listen. Speak. Think. Be wary of those who disparage the investigators, the readers, the writers, the listeners, the speakers and the thinkers. To defend freedom, demand fact.”

I was yacking with a friend about the series. As demoralized as he is over the state of our nation, he also questioned why the readers of a major urban daily in a very blue state needed any reminders of the mess.

I think its value can be found in its real potential to reach a wider audience, specifically in those states that were overwhelmingly for Trump. The Times actually built that kind of functionality into its web version of the pieces – select quotes can be tweeted and Facebooked, and the paper developed a landing page for letters both praising and scorning the series.

Parts three and four dropped past my deadline, but I urge you to hit the Times website and read it all for yourself. Be the investigator, thinker and listener we all need to be right now.

In the vein of investigating, thinking and writing, former Monterey Herald reporter Phil Molnar, who left the paper a few years ago for the wilds of San Diego, dropped his own unique piece on readers of the San Diego Union Tribune on April 3. Molnar emailed the 400 companies expected to submit design proposals to build Trump’s proposed border wall (those submissions were due April 4) and asked to see their plans. Most were hesitant, of course, to reveal their ideas before the due date, but 12 companies sent what Molnar described as “super-technical” descriptions of their proposals.

They range the gamut, from serious and spooky to ludicrous and defiant. On the defiant end, the group Otra Nation proposes no wall at all. The collective of Mexican and American engineers, builders and planners instead proposes what it calls a “regenerative” territory with no barrier, instead developing the border region into a node of cultural production with a $1 trillion hyperloop transportation system. On the ludicrous end, Clayton Industries of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, proposes a chain-link fence, sensors and, oh dear lord, a 100-foot trench in which nuclear waste has been buried. And if someone gets past that, they’d then have to scale a 30-foot wall to make it across the border.

On the serious and spooky side, Iowa-based Manatts Inc., a self-described family-owned company, proposes a wall that would be funded by families: They propose people would pay for engravings, memorials and family trees to be emblazoned on the wall. The owner says his research shows there is potential demand for the public to use the wall as a canvas. Also spooky is a proposal from National Consulting Services Inc., which proposes a wall with a monorail service that would feature voice analysis technology to detect the emotional states of riders.

Like the Times’ editorial series, I think Molnar’s wall piece deserves a wide audience.

MARY DUAN writes The Local Spin for the Weekly. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com