DESTINY CALLS
Trump is America in Human Form
The president you always wanted
Donald John Trump is a faithful reflection of the society he now governs. America couldn’t have resisted electing him. His vulgarity and fraudulence are spectacular and he exhibits them shamelessly: merrily dry-humping an American flag on stage in front of thousands. The plasti-dip tan, the troll-doll hair, the lazy, limp-wristed “power fists,” the phallic necktie — all of it loudly hooting, “Of course I’m an impostor pretending to be a billionaire-statesman. That’s why you adore me: I am America made flesh.”
Donald, more than most, is willing to appear grotesque in order to remain popular. That is his superpower. This should surprise no one. He’s the natural American leader, the organic choice. Can’t you just hear Seventy-Six Trombones playing him on and off the stage? He points us toward what H. L. Menken called “the American lust for the hideous, the delight in ugliness for its own sake.”
End-stage Trumpism has always been America’s fate. No society competes with the USA for cultural soil so fertile, and yet so toxic, that it could spawn, and later elevate to solemn public office, a featherweight novelty like President Donald.
He has teamed up with a neo-Nazi eugenicist life coach who’s got the kind of money Donald pretends to have. Trump thinks Elon is smart because he’s rich, but Musk actually is an inarticulate dope who fell backward into riches. And don’t try to tell me he’s autistic; being too stupid to pass the Turing test is not the same as autism. (I sense there’s a cognitive sweet spot between IQ 80 and 90 where Chomsky sounds like a chattering nitwit and Musk sounds like a visionary genius.) The pair make for some unforgettable scenes. Surely it doesn’t get any more American than the President of the United States playing straight man to a dominant, ill-mannered brat during a recent episode of The Oval Office Follies.
This should serve as a reminder to everyone that the ultimate state of political evolution is low comedy, while the terminal phase of neoliberal economics is aggressive social cleansing to ensure the concentration of all resources in the fewest possible hands: a wealth singluarity, so to speak. It has always been so. It is neither Donald’s fault, nor the MAGA crowd’s, nor Musk’s, that we’ve once again arrived at a ghastly moment of bread and circuses. It’s merely a curious fact that Donald John Trump, of all people, will be master of ceremonies for civilization’s third act, because this time around, America will serve as the vortex of final chaos.
No escape
The class war is over. They won. But don’t give in to buyer’s remorse; Kamala Harris would have done nothing to remedy the malaise of which Donald Trump and Elon Musk are the most conspicuous symptoms. The international kleptocracy’s triumph over the working class is complete: Capital has got Labor on its knees while Government fastens the zip ties. Shamala would have been a willing collaborator whose occasional gestures of concern, like President “Genocide Joe” Biden’s, would have slowed America’s descent into political Grand Guignol, but not arrested it.
She was always going to be present at the final smash-and-grab that we’re witnessing today. Politicians and plutocrats are hastily stuffing their Hermès go-bags because the current rate of wealth transfusion is unsustainable. The host — meaning everyone who’s not them — is near death from exsanguination and already hallucinating.
More people would suffer for a longer time under a Democratic administration’s preferred route to a slow and polite demise. Donald and his syllabically-challenged Rasputin will bring on the revolution sooner. There’s never been any hope of escaping the injuries and pain to come, so we’d do well to pull off the sticking plaster in one go. Peeling it away millimeter by millimeter will spill every bit as much blood, and hurt for a whole lot longer.
The class war is over. We lost. Think of society as a closed thermal system speeding past the red line and accelerating. The international ruling kleptocracy thinks it has protected itself through eternal austerity to keep us weak and vulnerable and dependent, and by corrupting every legislative and judicial avenue to social justice and public wellbeing. But they’ve actually just plugged the relief valves, guaranteeing a sudden and magnificently violent equalization of pressure.
The sooner we get to the part where billionaires and CEOs and politicians and media collaborators swing from utility poles by their intestines, the sooner we can get on with the job of creating a wholesome and humane society to replace the colossal toxic shithole we’ve become enmired in.
So bring it, Trumpers. Destiny calls.
