The martyrdom of Donald Trump
Imagine it yourselves. The situation will almost certainly be predictably mundane. The convicted felon Donald Trump is, say, on his way to one of his Nuremberg-style sieg heil rallies. He steps out of his limo, waves to an imaginary crowd of idolaters, then suddenly clutches his chest and collapses. An ambulance is quickly summoned, arriving in record time. He’s spirited off to the nearest hospital where he is pronounced dead on arrival. One third of the nation mourns, one third celebrates, the remaining third shrugs its collective shoulders. Finis. The end.
At the speed of light, in the publishing sense anyway, the following month, the following week, conceivably even the following day, a book is hustled into print. It’s called something like “The Assassination of Donald Trump.” It’s promoted relentlessly by Fox News, OAN, Newsmax and the MAGA cult on social media. Trump, the book insists, was murdered by elements of the Deep State, possibly on the order of Joe Biden himself, and herein lies the “proof.” It takes the publishing world by storm and becomes an overnight best seller.
Absurd, you say? Think again. In fact, I’m pretty sure this book has already been written — in outline form. Possibly by several different writers working independently of one another. Once Trump is dead their only concern will be getting their book into print faster than the other guy. Only the relevant details need to be filled in.
Given Trump’s age and stupid eating habits it’s a fair gamble that he will die soon. It’s a fifty-fifty gamble. He already looks like he’s just one porkchop shy of a fatal heart attack, as the saying goes. There’s already a frenetic appetite in the world of the supremely stupid for nonsense just like this. In fact, I cannot imagine a scenario in which Donald Trump dies and a conspiracy isn’t almost instantaneously launched.
Don’t believe me? Just wait. Most people reading these words will outlive Trump, so most of you will get to see it for yourselves.
Many people who read the book will quickly fall under its spell. It will be full of the little coincidences that happen every day in banal circumstances that few notice. It will be written by experts who know how to connect nonexistent dots and accumulate them into staggeringly stupid arguments sufficient to convince the gullible. The book’s success will depend largely on the cleverness of the writers. However well or poorly the book fairs in the open market, there will be more of them to follow, each succeeding book trying to outdo the last. Then will come the documentaries, YouTube videos, online debates in social media and on and on and on and bloody on.
Welcome to the paranoid, irrational, evidence-free and silly world we live in today. As MTG might put it, it’s a peach tree dish of roiling stupidity. It’s where only “sheeple” subscribe to the obvious narrative of Occam’s razor, where the world is flat, UFOs are extraterrestrial, vaccines contain microchips and chemtrails are slowly poisoning us. This is what happens when critical thinking takes a backseat.
So if you’re among the many who hopes Trump dies soon, be careful what you wish for. Satisfying as that might feel right now, it will almost certainly open a can of worms that could be worse even than Trump himself. For my part, I hope he lives a long life, long enough to miserably contemplate his many evil deeds from inside a prison cell. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.