Strongmen

TRUMP A Fable ^{Eve Ensler}

THIS IS THE STORY of what happened in the late time, right before the end time, that later got interrupted and became the new time. In those days there arrived in the land of violent amnesia and rapacious dreams—a virus. It first became discernible in an oafish, chubby man with orange hair. Some say it was the virus that turned his hair orange. Others claimed his hair was actually the virus. The oafish, chubby man with orange hair goes on to become the most powerful man in the world.

It was highly debated whether the intensity of the infection was the cause of his rise, but it has since become clear that the virus was a very contagious one and that much of the populace had a dormant strain of it lodged in their beings which was activated by the orange man during his toxic campaign.

Those infected the most deeply were those with unexamined wounds and openings from childhood, repressed fear, insecurities that were ripe for othering and rage, predisposition towards racism and sexism and insatiable daddy hunger. These tendencies were exacerbated and catalyzed by the way the portly, thuggish leader injected the virus into the unsuspecting crowds through angry white-hate filled spittle, slimy superlatives, sham-filled promises, and toxic red caps which allowed the virus to seep in through the hair follicles and head. Bald men were most susceptible.

This, fortunately, was not true of all segments of the population because some appeared to have built-in immunity. Most of those were the ones who lived on the various edges, which was ironic, as it was the ones most foreign and exiled from the culture who would eventually find a cure. We will come to that later.

It was also highly debated whether the man with orange hair was the origin of the virus or simply the manifestation of it. Some said it didn’t matter, but I believe it matters a lot. For if the chubby man were the originator of the virus, then it would have simply been one sick individual contaminating the public and if and when he was eliminated, the virus, would, in theory, be gone as well. But we know this didn’t happen. So the question then evolved: why was the oafish, portly man with orange hair the major host of the virus?

And again, the theories abound.

One classic theory is that the thuggish man had become what no one had yet become in the time of late date consumption and greed. He had evolved or devolved (depending on your perspective) into what the psychologists later came to define as a genocidal narcissist—a person willing and able to destroy everyone and everything on the planet as long as it makes him feel momentarily better. That extreme and total endgame narcissism made the oafish man a perfect super host for the virus. For it has since been discovered that the virus can only fester in an environment where the host has developed no antibodies to tolerate others, or indeed criticism, difference, curiosity, questions, doubt, ambiguity, the truth, mystery, waiting, thinking, reading, reflecting, questioning, wondering, caring, feeling, listening, or studying. It is where the healing properties of humor and irony have been killed off and self-obsession, revenge, and self-adulation have taken their place.

Noted symptoms of the virus are: hysteria, mania, illogical thinking, impulse disorder, bullying, a distorted belief that the group and gender to which you belong is superior, vile and showoffy compulsive grabbing, molesting behavior towards women, compulsive lying, increased paranoia, loss of ability to distinguish between good and evil (for example equating Nazis and white supremacists with people fighting for their constitutional rights), and shifting and constantly evolving enemies, because the infection needs a target to energize its effective components. One day it was Mexicans, the next day blonde women reporters, the next a Puerto Rican mayor, the next black football players. It was actually irrelevant to the virus who the enemy was as long as it kept shifting and escalating as the pathogen craved and fed off this antagonistic energy. But it has been conclusively determined that the virus would first seek already existing weaknesses in the DNA of the culture.

If, for example, the culture had never addressed or healed from historical and on-going oppressions, genocides, or hatreds, the virus could easily attach itself to these previous maladies and multiply as the virus thrives on unexamined, pustulating moral wounds.

There have been many studies done into the roots of the infection. Historians, political scientists, Marxists, business leaders, race scholars, eco-feminists, bacteriologists, philosophers, pathologists, and artists each offered various theories and hypothesis. It was believed for quite some time in some religious quarters, those that believe in other lifetimes, that the virus was a kind of karma extremis, a poisonous accumulation of the terrible deeds done by the orange man’s empiric nation of Coca-Cola. That the original genocidal acts committed against the native people, the hundreds of years of slavery and hatred and systemic racism, the concurring years of unfettered economic growth hinged on endless murder, rape, pillaging, and war, invasions, land mines, napalm, nuclear bombs, destruction of the earth, hatred of workers, simply flooded the collective psychic basin and tore through the membrane that acts as protective spiritual ozone for humanity. This cosmic tear rendered the most shallow, unreflective, fearful, angry, and bitter totally vulnerable to the noxious strain. It was believed by some that the rotund man was actually not a man at all, but an orange demonic entity.

But there were many who had always seen capitalism as a producer of a parallel chronic and deadly virus, one of low self-esteem created by the eternal pressure of the competitive machine and colonizing forces of branding. They saw the chunky mean orange man as the ultimate purveyor of carcinogenic comparison and suicidal self-hatred. He had, through trickster practices convinced the people that he was the modern-day king of monopoly, that singular individual who had managed to erect phallic gold towers in many cities and have his name plastered across the universe. He was what was called in those days a huge success and it was believed that it was the unlikely and extreme combination of envy and awe that had propelled him to the top. The fact that no one was able to really determine if he was a huge success (as his tax returns were never made available) seemed bizarrely irrelevant to his followers, as did the many cases he had declared of bankruptcy. Fantasy carried the day, an incurable strain of delusional devotional father fever. It was astounding to see how long this fever persisted.

Then there were the environmentalists, mycologists, biologists, botanists, entomologists, geneticists, herpetologists, ichthyologists, neuroscientists, and many others who were actually in agreement that climate change was at the core of the virus, because it had a less direct but definite effect on infectious diseases. Climate and weather alterations impacted viruses and the animal and insects that host them and could radically change how humans were exposed. During the time of the orange man, for example, the world had seen radical increases in childhood learning disabilities, ADD, autism, Lyme disease, depression, anxiety, and suicide of teenagers and even a return of the bubonic plague. All of these were directly linked to environmental damage. So it was wildly agreed that the virus hosted by the orange man was caused by extreme pollution of some sort—air, the loss of coral reefs, pesticides, warming of the seas, or a combination thereof.

There was a whole school of acarologists in Massachusetts who had serious data proving that the virus was linked with the “nine iron tick,” a nine-legged arachnid only found on golf courses buried deep in sand traps. It was the conjecture of the acarologists that the parasitic properties of the tick were transmuted into the host and that he in turn fed off the blood of the people he infected.

The oncologists had a very different reading and believed the virus was a tumor-causing agent and was somehow related to diminishing testosterone, which manifested as a brain lesion/ tumor rendering the host or infected one into a violent fool. It is not clear whether the tumor made the host violent or being a fool made him violent or if they were one and the same. The tumor, constantly pressing on the brain, created a sense in the host that he was always under surveillance which is why he despised the press and the former leader of the land who he constantly accused, without a drop of evidence, of surveilling him. The orange idiot would have constant mad outbursts of this violence on something at the time called Twitter, a bizarre technological mechanism that shot word pellets into the public.

And, there was evidence that this virus was spreading and worsening. It began appearing in other men who were suddenly going on shooting rampages, murdering hundreds at concerts and shopping malls and other public gatherings with no apparent motives. It became known after many of these incidents that white men over the age of fifty were the main carriers of the disease as they had not, due to privilege and arrogance, developed the necessary and flexible antibodies mentioned above to fight off the virus.

This enraged a powerful community of feminists who thought little of the virus theory. They were thoroughly convinced that the so-called virus was not a virus at all but the final manifestation of malignant racist patriarchy. They were disturbed that it was being called a virus as it took responsibility from the rotund oinker with orange hair and all his followers and made it seem like something they had caught rather than something they were perpetrating. But even some amongst them had to admit that the qualities, persistence, and recurrence of racist patriarchy made it seem much like a virus, and they were still at a loss to explain how thousands of white women had voted for the chubby gangster after he had bragged about being able to grab their pussy parts because he was famous.

There were many women who believed the orange round slime was no longer a man at all, but through the deteriorating impact of the virus had become a kind of octopus, (not to insult octopi as they are highly-evolved creatures). Yes, they thought he had become a soft-bodied, eight-armed mollusk whose flaccid body could rapidly alter its shape and whose many groping tentacles would sometimes, at parties, on airplanes, or during job interviews, travel up women’s skirts attempting to get through their panties or into their blouses, sliding and ejecting a dark goo around their breasts. These mushy octopi seemed to replicate throughout the land. They would station themselves at the head of entertainment and news companies where they would incubate for years and were able to easily shoot their goo and wrap their tentacles around hundreds of women in broad daylight while other men with low-level infection, awed by the octopi, longing for similar position and fortune, watched and said nothing.

Some saw the octopi as the ultimate performer in a culture hinged on fantasy and entertainment. They blamed the TV executives for the original spread of the virus as from the onset the corporate leaders understood that the vicious carrot man increased their ratings and sold more Subarus. The populace was glued to the corpulent con artist with an all-consuming fascination that verged on obsession. Because they had long ago lost the ability to distinguish the real from unreal they were transfixed by the on-going sideshow, somehow disconnected from the catastrophic outcome.

And there were a small group who believed the nation had simply been seized by a scary clown and that the population was suffering from coulrophobia, a fear of clowns that rendered people paralyzed, terrified, anxious, and dysfunctional. The man with the orange hair smiled when he was murderous, he told lies by the minute, and committed crimes daily. Like the notorious John Wayne Gacy, a clown who was actually a serial killer who had murdered thirty-three people, he understood, as Gacy said, “Clowns can get away with anything.”

Then there were those who kept believing the virus would pass, that it was only momentary, and that it couldn’t possibly hold or spread further. They were sure it was simply a strange aberration that would never be tolerated and if they did not give it attention, it would disappear. These are the same people who feel a bump under their skin or see blood in their poop and believe that if they ignore it really, really hard, it will somehow go away. It is hard to tell whether these folks had actually already been infected by the virus, as one of the major symptoms of the virus was an inability to know that you have it.

Another major component of the virus that ravaged privileged people was their refusal to resist it. The privileged were simply unable to give up their daily comforts in order to fight the virus when it began to infect and destroy the lives of the less fortunate. The virus created a superstitious delusion in them that if they did not focus on the virus they couldn’t catch it. If rather than ignoring it, if they looked at it or touched it—the privileged truly believed—they would get it. This delusion later proved to be fatal.

Then there were those who could perceive the virus and who should have been actively fighting it. They were called liberalatte. Because no one in this group was practiced in telling the whole truth, because they were an opposition that had ceased being the opposition years ago, they tried to placate the virus, adapt to the virus, and accommodate the virus. For some inexplicable reason they seemed worried about offending the virus and therefore making it worse. The virus would occasionally ruffle the liberalatte, but they had lost the will or the energy to scream out for all the millions who were suffering from the deep sickness the virus was spreading.

Because secretly the liberalatte believed that to truly revolt against the virus would alienate the people in the middle, and they were most concerned about losing their positions and power and comfort, they learned how to mute their outrage, sorrow and reactions and by doing so normalized the virus which allowed it to spread wider and deeper.

Then, of course, there were those who served in the court of the orange man. They had contracted the virus and most definitely understood the devastating impact of the virus, and secretly despised the orange octopi pig, but somehow through their malevolence attempted to use the pathogen to their own end. Rather than trying to protect their fellow citizens and stop the deadly virus or disrobe the orange haired emperor, they rode his mad sickness like a wild horse gaining every benefit they could. While the population was being deported, banned, attacked, starved, refused medical treatment, lied to, forced to have babies, run over by cars, shot by police and white supremacists, abandoned, and forced to drink poisoned water after a storm, they moved to get as much money, land, drilling rights, private airplane trips, island vacations, monument parks, tax cuts for themselves as they possibly could. They were called virus bankers.

The malady spread deeper and deeper throughout the land. Crops withered. Fires burned. Storms raged. Animals disappeared. Hate festered and hate crimes escalated.

Generals were hired to police the orange idiot and contain the sickness, but they quickly fell by the wayside, becoming apologists for the plague and its host, losing their integrity and minds. They, of course, had latent aspects of the virus embedded in their own consciousness and began to sound more insane and demented than the tubby lout they were monitoring.

Psychiatrists and psychologists broke protocol and issued warnings to the public that a malignant normality was spreading through the land and that the orange man was insane, living in his own reality, that the people would be unable to manage the crises that would eventually face the most powerful man in the world.

There were many brave determined people who did not have the virus but suffered from its consequences and they rose in the millions in the streets, in the Congress, at airports to prevent the virus from completely ruining their lives. Initially, they were not able to prevent the virus, but their on-going activity kept them from being contaminated themselves.

Committees were formed to investigate the multiple crimes and offenses of the orange fool and the sick people around him.

Some in the press became almost obsessed with reporting on the viscous pestilence almost to the point of orange madness.

Lawyers pressed hundreds of legal cases. Bacteriologists developed sprays and poisons. Pharmacologists harnessed new antibiotics and mood-altering drugs.

Many in the land became hopeless, depressed, suicidal, homicidal, disassociated, hostile, alcoholic. Those who could afford it went shopping or fled to other countries. But the virus followed them there as it had taken hold in new forms and had possessed leaders far and wide.

Arguments raged about methods and tactics of approaching the plague and the orange emperor. The strident ones believed that only complete annihilation would rid the world of the illness. The non-violent practitioners and faith leaders called for empathy and the need for reconciliation, understanding, and healing. They believed if they could unlock the roots of the virus, it could be released from the collective cells. They held vigils and prayer ceremonies and developed spiritual antidotes.

Witches made potions from strands of orange hair and spittle and did ongoing hexes.

But still the virus raged deeper and deeper. The orange followers became so toxic that, although they could feel the impact, they were unable to admit that their jobs, homes, air, water, health care, were being systematically destroyed by their fearless leader. The genocidal narcissist began to prepare them for nuclear Armageddon. This shockingly felt more relieving than the opioids they were addicted to, and less expensive.

The land of violent amnesia and rapacious dreams was nearing its end.

Then something wondrous and surprising began to happen.

The seers, the mystics, the sexual explorers, the artists, the exiles, began to do what they had wanted to do all along, but were now free to do with the end of the world in sight.

They made each other laugh and rubbed and healed each other with special oils and rituals and prayers. They lay with each other and shared their dreams. They listened to each other’s stories and made amends and reparations. They learned to read the stars and listen to the wind. They rediscovered ecstasy and poetry and purpose. They grieved for the world and held each other as they wept. They wrapped themselves around trees and bowed down to the rivers. They spent their days dancing and massaging each other. They foraged for food and fed each other. They stopped competing and striving.

Every day was filled with extraordinary acts of kindness. And a warm and delicious energy began to rise. It was liquid like honey and its pull was irresistible. One by one people began to join them. Even those who thought they didn’t know how to dance suddenly heard and moved to new rhythms. Even those afraid to touch or be touched found themselves lathering on oils. And a new world began to grow. It was magical and even work seemed like play.

The orange moron became louder and more hysterical but the people could no longer hear him as the radiant music was sweeping across the land. And as his idolaters were transformed into revellers and there was no one to admire or worship him, the people of the land watched with horror and awe as the gross sac of the vile emperor’s body began to wither like a deflated orange ball.

And so the moral of the story and the lesson from the orange idiot is to keep your souls clean. Viruses are always lurking but they cannot thrive where the people have washed their past darkness and have fortified themselves with solidarity, imagination, and love.