Berlin.
So here it is, mid-September, and it looks like Trump is still in this thing. Which is pretty amazing when you think about it. Despite the Hitlerization of this clown by more or less every major organ of the mainstream media throughout the spring, and his Russification throughout the summer, and his racism, narcissism, and blatant idiocy, he’s polling within a couple points of Clinton.
This was not supposed to happen. Neoliberal elites are panicking. It’s not that they’re worried about Trump himself as much as this “populist backlash” thing, which appears to be spreading throughout the West, and is screwing with stuff like the TPP, the European Union, and Great Britain, and so on. Which means, from now until November 8, the liberal media will be deploying every emotionally manipulative weapon in their arsenal to guilt-trip you into voting for Clinton, as if democracy and life itself depended on it. Here are some examples from the weekend papers …
The New York Times, having already done the “Trump-is-Hitler” thing to death, broke out the Klu Klux Klan analogy, proclaiming Trump the Grand Wizard of Birtherism. The Guardian reported he called on his brownshirts to assassinate Clinton at a rally in Miami (although they went back later and toned down their headline, which even for The Guardian was over the top). Washington Post, after conducting an in-depth analysis of three or four of Trump’s tweets, agreed that he was raising “the specter of violence.” And, following Jimmy Fallon’s hair-mussing incident, Slate announced that from this point on “there is no longer a non-partisan space … there are no Switzerlands in the 2016 election.” You’re either with Clinton or you’re a Hitler-lover.
The problem is, it isn’t working (or it isn’t working well enough), the tried and true “Hitlerization” tactic. Perhaps it’s the fact that Trump is an American. Hitlerization works much better on foreign “Hitlers,” like Ho Chi Min, Noriega, Milosevic, or Saddam Hussein. Or maybe they’ve just used it too often. I mean, sure, you can trick people into believing that someone is a “modern day Hitler” six, maybe seven times running, but eventually they start to feel like suckers who keep falling for the same crap over and over. Norman Solomon wrote a book about this, back in 2005, I believe … but whatever, this is no time for history or critical thinking. There’s too much at stake.
With that in mind, as a loyal American, I feel it’s time to dispense with satire and contribute to the effort to help the Democrats, and the Clintons, and their friends at Goldman Sachs, and the entire transnational capitalist ruling class, save the world from the coming Trumpocalypse. I intend to do that by scaring you shitless, because I can’t really think of any other reason you’d want to buy into this mockery of democracy and actually go out vote for Clinton … and, apparently, neither can she or her people, because the fear thing seems to be all they’ve got. So no more pussyfooting around. Here it is, the nightmare scenario. Vote for Clinton, or this is what you get.
Friday, January 20, 2017
Immediately after being sworn in as President, so right there on the Capitol steps, as a horrified nation watches on TV, Trump declares a National State of Emergency “to deal with the illegal immigrant threat,” dissolves the U.S. Congress, suspends the Constitution, and appoints himself “Leader of the Western World.” He orders the military to assemble its troops in football stadiums with corporate names and swear an “Oath of Allegiance” to him personally. He orders NORAD to go to DEFCON 3, for reasons he refuses to clarify. Global markets plunge precipitously. The entire American “Deep State” nexus (DOD, DHS, NSA, CIA, DOJ, NSC, CFR, Wall Street, et al.) have no choice but to follow his orders, because they have to respect the election results. In spite of the fact that Trump clearly intends to strip them of their enormous power, and establish some sort of megalomaniacal fascist empire and take over the world, they surrender, and do whatever he says.
Saturday, January 21
Trump appoints David Duke both Director of the Department Homeland Security and Chief of Staff. Duke promptly orders the DHS logo to be revised to prominently feature “Pepe the Frog.” Meanwhile, the Clintons, and most of the Democratic Party leadership, are arrested by Trump’s personal “Security Forces,” charged with sedition, and spirited away to an undisclosed location. Trump closes the United Nations headquarters in New York, nationalizes the Wall Street banks, unilaterally abrogates every international trade deal the U.S. has ever signed on to, and orders “persons of un-American ethnicity” to report to their local DHS office for “processing.” Again, nobody is able to stop him, because “he won the election fair and square.”
Sunday, January 22
By Sunday morning the spirited but strictly non-violent anti-Trump protests that erupted overnight around the country have been brutally crushed by the U.S. military, which just mindlessly follows the obviously insane orders of recently unretired General Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Wisps of smoke rise from the National Mall, where David Duke and his Department of Homeland Security stormtroopers, most in full Klu Klux Klan regalia, conducted some sort of mass cross burning during the night. Trump nationalizes the television networks. He nationalizes the Internet and names Kellyanne Conway “Internet Czarina.” He closes the airports and seals the borders. The global economy completely collapses. Hording, rioting, and looting is rampant. The entire world is powerless to stop this, because, after all, “he won the election.” The global capitalist ruling classes tremble in fear in their yachts and mansions, wishing they weren’t bound by “the rules” to respect the people’s choice this one time.
Monday, January 23
America wakes to finds its streets occupied by Russian soldiers, most of whom are clearly drunk. Trump and Putin appear together on the lawn of the White House, both of them shirtless, looking like they’ve been up all night, and announce a new bilateral arrangement whereby the two of them will rule the world “with iron fists of decisive greatness.” The Russian invasion is only temporary. They all fly home at the end of the day, and immediately invade the European Union, for reasons that make no sense to anyone. India and Pakistan nuke each other. NORAD goes to DEFCON 2.
Tuesday, January 24
The Anschluss of Mexico and Canada begins … and ends victoriously three hours later. Trump, out of “an abundance of caution,” goes ahead and takes Central America, and orders a wall built on the Colombian border. Europe, at this point, has been reduced to rubble. Brussels and Berlin have been tactically nuked, rumor has it by Nigel Farage, who has somehow assumed control of Great Britain. Marine le Pen, who is running France, has been frantically trying to get through to Trump and find out who to surrender to, but unfortunately all the hot-lines are down. Meanwhile, back in the USA, David Duke, and a handful of other racist losers you’ve never heard of, have gathered in a villa on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain to sketch out “a solution to the Mexican problem.” Israel, figuring “oh, what the hell,” goes ahead and nukes Iran. Putin, relaxing in his Black Sea dacha with a bevy of bimbos and Edward Snowden, watches it all unfold on TV, laughing demonically as democracy burns. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who has somehow miraculously survived thus far, emerges from hiding to scold millennials for stubbornly refusing to vote for Clinton, the only person who could have prevented all this.
Wednesday, January 25
China nukes Russia. Russia nukes Japan. The U.K. nukes Brussels, which has already been nuked. Israel nukes Saudi Arabia and Egypt. North Korea nukes South Korea. France, apparently, nukes itself. Trump, consummate showman to the end, stages a enormous Riefenstahlian rally in honor of Wotan in Central Park, proclaims himself “the one-eyed God,” and orders all Americans to poison themselves with a mixture of cyanide and Peach Mango Kool-Aid, the trademark for which he has recently acquired with a loan from some no-name bank he nationalized … all of which could have been avoided if people had just shut up and voted for Clinton.
Thursday, January 26
The Trumpocalypse … the end of all life on Earth. This is Humanity’s final punishment for ignoring the warnings of neoliberal pundits and refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton. Trump, sensing the end is nigh, and (like every other megalomaniac) wanting to take all of Creation with him, launches his remaining nukes at Putin. He does this from the open bomb bay of a Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit. As Putin launches his retaliatory strike, cursing the soul of his former puppet, Trump rides the snow white B83 thermonuclear gravity ordnance, Slim Pickens-style, down out of the heavens, wearing a “Make America Great” cap to keep his hair from looking silly …
Shantih … shantih … shantih …
N.B. The preceding was a work of political satire intended for mature audiences only. As a former New Yorker who had to live in physical proximity to Donald Trump, and read his name in big gold letters protruding from the facades of various buildings on a daily basis for fifteen years, and given the current political climate, I feel it necessary to reiterate here my previously expressed contempt for Mr Trump, whom I consider a disgusting, self-aggrandizing charlatan, not to mention a racist, misogynist pig. I do not support him or any of his activities. I wish him, and all those like him, ill. So take it easy on the tweets and emails.