Trump: Too Crazy for Fiction

The Real World Has Given Us a President that You Could Not Write a Credible Story About Under Any Circumstances

 

Let’s imagine I created a TV show called, oh, I don’t know… America is Broken; y’know, something subtle like that. Then I created some direct marketing platform akin to Netflix through which subscribers could watch the entire first season of that show at whatever pace they so choose, with the ratings available only to myself to analyse.

For argument’s sake, let’s say this is a basic synopsis of the first four episodes:

1. A man (let’s call him Steve Spigot-Hole) is elected President of the United States, despite 3 million plus people voting against him, and immediately gets to work steamrolling reproductive rights, legislating unconstitutional immigration initiatives and trying to wrest healthcare away from tens of millions. Also, virtually no one shows up to his inauguration, while the population of a small country engage in a protest of him the very next day.
2. His executive immigration order, which is essentially a thinly veiled Muslim ban, is rolled out, leading to mass protests across the country and the world at large. Also, he continues to lie about basic things, like how many people were at his swearing-in ceremony and that his loss of the popular vote was due to mass voter fraud, both of which are demonstrably false.
3. Three federal judges put a stop to this executive order, citing it as unconstitutional, and the President attacks them on Twitter, whilst continuing plans to construct a $21b wall on the border between the United States and Mexico to keep out the, quote, “bad hombres”.
4. It comes to light that, during his campaign and maybe even after his inauguration, many key members of the President’s team were in contact with Russian operatives, many of whom were engaged in hacking his opponent in order to sway the election. The President’s National Security Advisor resigns (or is sacked, who knows?) and, meanwhile, Spigot-Hole’s disapproval rating rises to 55%, yet he still remains the President.

Now, after a few days of my patented streaming service being available with this content, I check to see what the numbers are for the rest of the season, and do you know what I find? There fucking aren’t any because no one made it past the fourth episode because WHAT A FUCKING STUPID STORY AND WHO WOULD BELIEVE THIS SHIT???!!!

Reductive though it may be, I find comparing the batshit clusterfuckery of this actual administration to a fictional counterpart fairly illuminating, mostly because it works on any level. Seriously: imagine I made an album where the first four tracks were just me insisting I was the greatest musician alive between the sounds of me dropping my guitar, farting and yelling the n-word. Track five onwards could be unearthed collaborations between John Lennon and Prince and no one would ever know it.

Or how about a video game where, after being taught the mechanics on your controller, for the first four levels you’re instructed to re-learn them on a calculator that’s missing buttons and has a screen showing a constant stream of the game’s programmer sleeping with your wife? A novel where the first forty pages are smeared in baby bear shit, but you have a book report due in the morning and to have any hope understanding the plot you need to read what’s written on them? A foreign movie without subtitles that’s played backwards for it’s first forty minutes and, if you can’t answer some basic questions about the story by the end, a bomb strapped to your genitals goes off?

My point – such as it is – is that we wouldn’t accept this sort of unprofessionalism from the things is our life that are meant merely as distractions, the modes of entertainment that can be deeply rewarding but, largely, are trivial when compared to real-world issues and actions. So, could someone explain to me why in fuck Donald Trump has not been summarily removed from his position as President?

And I’m not looking for some patronizing rationalisation that points out the obvious, that the members of his cabinet (especially Steve Bannon) have a vested interest in keeping him in power, that the GOP at large (especially Paul Ryan) have adopted the stance of protecting their party over the country they are sworn to uphold the fundamental tenets of under any circumstances. No, I mean just on a basic level of decency, of what is reasonably required of a person who occupies the Presidency, I need to be made to understand: how is this still happening?!

I am loathe to make this point – most especially because it smacks of pettiness and has been used ad nauseum by Trump and members of his administration in the past – but Barack Obama would have been crucified over this shit! Even the slightest suggestion that his party had been in contact with Russian officials attempting to sway an election, and then lied about it, would have ended him on the spot. For fuck sake, the same people who were chanting, “Lock her up!” in response to Hillary’s use of a private email server seem to have no problem with Donald engaging in matters of national security at his country club surrounded by diners!

So, if we’re keeping with the conceit of my imaginary TV show, here’s some spoilers for future installments: Spigot-Hole’s gotta go. No two ways about it, when the Commander in Chief constantly spouts unsubstantiated falsehoods and rears up when people question them, we’re headed towards a dictatorship. When he picks a fight with the media because of the negative way they portray him by literally reporting the words that come out of his mouth, we’re headed for a fractured reality. And, as per his most recent press conference, when he speaks using the language of a slow eight-year-old when it comes to the issue of uranium (“You know what uranium is, right? It’s this thing called nuclear weapons. Like lots of things are done with uranium. Including some bad things.”), well… Let’s put it this way: this show is not getting renewed for a second season.