Epilogue: An Ocean of Metaphor
While victory will be sweet for the winners it will be ashes in the mouths of the Magas. A spear in their side with a vinegar and piss cocktail on a sponge. Enduring the tortures of Jesus should they not be treated like Jesus?
No, not nailed to a cross. The other thing... whatsit... I always forget this one.
LOVE.... yes... that's it. We should love them through this bad thing. This thing which will try (and convict) their souls.
* * *
After his father gave him an Ivy League education and four hundred million dollars, Trump embarked on 50 year quest to become the most famous living person in the world. This obsession paid off beyond his wildest dreams. But Trump never understood the secret of the truly famous and worshiped. Once they reach the mountain top, they tend to limit their exposure, instinctively understanding the contempt bred by overexposure.
36,000 RageTweets later, no one really knows what was going through Trump's mind three years ago when his wife was weeping in fear while they popped the champagne corks on air at Fox, but it was not this: "What a humbling moment."
Humility is a necessary quality if one's life is to be of any use to anyone other than himself. Trump was suckled on the poison milk of "Winning!" Having been given the opportunity to spread that poison into the American polity, he took to the task with a dark glee which has been both difficult and fascinating to watch. That polity, which has so mercilessly humiliated him at every turn, has nonetheless been transformed if not fatally sickened. Humiliation and humility are vastly different things. Being impervious to the one and incapable of the other sometimes makes monsters.
Trump's poison has affected the majority perhaps as much as it has the Magas, but there are signs the sickness will not be unto death, that the fever is breaking. Saint Nancy, in an Annunciation straight from Luke, has loosed the Good News on the Civilized and Sane World that the plague will soon burn out. The cockroaches (those who avoid the falling rain of shoes dropping all around) will scurry back under the black rocks of capital, greed, and hubris from whence they spawned to silently await their next opportunity. This pause in the Dance of Red Death will allow the survivors to (once again) sweep up the mess and attempt to repair the damage. Will we soon enough forget Trump's excesses and unrelenting fury and opt for a second helping, stumbling to some dystopia where guys like Trump become the norm?
Perhaps the Magas will fall into a brooding, dangerous silence, sitting with their thoughts on suburban and hillbilly porches in Scarlett Country, sipping bourbon splashed coffee and wondering how things got so bad. How things went so wrong. If they return to the polls to avenge Trump and latch on to some actual Kingian mad man come to life, will the institutions hold again?
Trump will lose the election if he is not removed, but the only way to shut him up will be to lock him up. He is closer to making that particular entry into the history books than most Magas know. Rudy's jeopardy is more acute. The spectacle of a former SDNY USA providing (generally on live television) detailed descriptions of his commission of serial felonies involving national security not only leaves me speechless, it will ultimately silence Rudy as well. Soon we will see and hear Rudy about as often as we do Micheal Cohen and Paul Manafort, other lawyers who once knew Trump's Light.
Trump and Rudy and the entire cast of extras who somehow got control of the movie studio will soon be folding themselves like prions back into the stippled texture of the American underbelly, their project collapsed into nothing more than a history book's worth of uneditable out-takes and overexposed stock. Having burned through almost 12 trillion dollars, the director exposed as a Philistine and a poser with snakes in his back pocket and maggots in his brain, the suits have pulled the plug on the production. Trump: just another hack who will never work in this (or any other) town again.
Those who don't end up in prison after this last season of 'Celebrity Apprentice President' will lurch back to their anonymous day jobs, back to the investment banks, the private equity shops, and the White Shoe Plaintiff's Firms. They will toil in the anonymity of plenty and keep watch; mongrel dogs poised for scraps. The dam now weakened these opportunists, old as Satan and meaner still, have a terrible, new knowledge to bring to their next campaign.
The stagnant and dying inland sea formed by the logjam of Trump has at long last found an outlet to the ocean. The American experiment is on the run once again. May we keep steady breath and a strong will as we find our way back from this present darkness.