Photo by Andrew Napier | CC BY 2.0
Everybody’s talking, here and in Europe and in China, about how come I didn’t hurt my eyes when I looked straight at the sun during the TREMENDOUS eclipse last week. Don’t look!, someone nearby shouted, it wasn’t Melania, believe me, because she knows, I told her I wasn’t going to wear sunglasses because it was MY eclipse, I ordered it, that’s why I could look at the sun all I wanted to and smile, the only one who did that in the whole world, Melania knows but very few other people do.
I didn’t want to speak out about this, first because I’m very, very modest, that’s the truth, and second, because I was busy eclipsing Obama, and everyone does know, thanks to my fantastic retweets, that I totally eclipsed him with all those executive orders and so many millions at my inauguration, but now it’s time to let Americans and everyone else in on the secret story behind the other eclipse, the one that really matters, because what I did to Obama is NOTHING compared to what I did to the sun, how I made it disappear across our wonderful nation, more proof, as if it was needed, that I’ve made America Great Again! I’m only telling the story of what really happened because the fake news media won’t carry this, will never give me credit, that’s how sick and dishonest they are.
Here’s the thing. Here are the facts. When I told my generals that I was ordering an eclipse of the sun, and it was their job to make sure it was going to be beautiful, it has to be more beautiful and darker than any other eclipse ever, because everybody needs to know that darkness is good, I gave the order and my generals said, Yes sir, Mr. President. But they weren’t so happy by any stretch when I told them the path of totality of my eclipse across our blood and soil had to happen on Sunday August 20th.
They hemmed and hawed and said it was too soon, they couldn’t arrange the sort of eclipse I wanted until August 21st – no wonder
they can’t win in Afghanistan and navy ships are colliding all over the place. I got angry, to tell you the truth, because August 20th is a special day for me. It would mark exactly seven months since I took office and seven is my lucky number. Ivanka – she’s smart and pretty too, prettier than Obama’s daughters, and smarter -, Ivanka brought this to my attention the day I was inaugurated as President of this Nation with the greatest landslide in the history of the country, better even than George Washington’s. Ivanka said, “Dad”, she always calls me Dad, I love it when she calls me Dad, “you are 70 years and 7 months and 7 days old today. 777.” And then Jared added that this year was year 5777 for the Hebrews, and he’s Jewish, so he should know, and he also reads lots of books.
As to the generals who were refusing my orders, well, I was thinking of firing the whole lot of them – I can do that, I’m Commander in Chief, so I can fire anyone I want, just like on The Apprentice, I can fire every last officer, except the young man with the nuclear football, him I keep close all the time, just in case I decide to launch one of those amazing bombs that we built and what are they for if we don’t use them, that’s what I want to know. Anyway, the generals were lucky this time around because Mike Pence piped up. He was there in the Oval Office to write out my executive order about the eclipse – Mike is good at writing executive orders but but he’ll never be chief executive, that I can tell you – Mike said, Mr. President, God rested on the seventh day, and August 20th is a Sunday, and the people who love you might misconstrue it – he uses words like misconstrue! – if you disrespect their Christian beliefs and blot the light out on the day of the Lord and that darkness was good but not that good on a Sunday, better do it on a Monday, and seven fits three times into twenty-one, at least that’s what the scientists I called in said and they should know, that’s what I’m paying them for, so that’s what we ended up doing, August 21st it was. And my crooked opponents say I don’t listen to advice!
And when the news leaked out about my eclipse, the elite pundits at CNN and lying James Comey and the failing New York Times and Angela Merkel – she’s weak, by the way – and even Mitch McConnell (who is so INEFFECTIVE he couldn’t get a light bulb to follow his orders, let alone the sun!) -, they all were whispering that I had nothing to do with the eclipse, they said it would have happened anyway, that it’s a natural whatever. But what do they know? Did they win the election? Did they preside over the most successful seven months in the history of the Presidency? Did the alt left go to the best schools and make as much money? Losers!
They don’t understand that this eclipse was meant to send a message to the enemies of America. A message to Kim-Jong-Un: you think this is dark, wait until I give you a taste of fire and fury and nuclear winter sets in worse than in Game of Thrones, which I happen to watch from time to time, though I didn’t like it when the dwarf killed his father. A message to Iranians: you’d better stop funding radical Islamic terrorists and ISIS and all those madrassas (that’s what they call their mosques). A message to Black Lives Matter: You want black, I’ll give you more black than you can deal with when the sun takes a hike! And a message to my enemies everywhere and anywhere: if I can do this to the king of the solar system, just imagine what I can do to you.
Darkness is good.
That’s the real message.
I can’t remember who said that to me, someone did, but whoever it was, that was great advice and I listened, believe me I listened to whoever in hell it was that said that darkness is good, I listened and now everybody on this planet knows it as well, that I can do a whole lot worse to all of you, something huge, bigger than erasing the sun for a few tiny minutes, something the likes of which the earth has never seen before.
And that’s something you better believe.
Ariel Dorfman, an emeritus professor of literature at Duke, is the author of the play “Death and the Maiden” and the forthcoming book of essays Homeland Security Ate My Speech and the novel “Darwin’s Ghosts”. He lives with his wife in Durham, North Carolina and their native Chile.
