A Cloak of Rats
I have a “darkly optimistic” prediction about what awaits Donald Trump if he wins the election in November. I think his long con — quite possibly the longest and most successful con in human history — comes to an end. This means that the spell he holds over the tens of millions who he has hoodwinked into believing he is some kind of a scrappy fighter for the everyday Joe instead of what he is — a billionaire serial rapist reality show host who’s dedicated his life to stiffing the everyday Americans who have worked for him, donated to his fake charities, gone to his casinos, paid tuition at his scam university etc. — is broken, concludes.
I think it will happen for the following two reasons:
1. The man he has picked for his VP is a cynical grifter in a way that is far too similar to Donald. However, JD Vance is going to have a very difficult time convincing people he is for real. He lacks Donald’s WWF-style ultra-tacky “charisma” and the record of JD’s phoniness and bullshitery hangs upon him like a cloak of rats. He is a finance and tech bro supported by the proudly Machiavellian billionaire Peter Thiel who is cosplaying as some salt-of-the-earth fighter for the everyman. This deception is going to prove very difficult for JD to obscure. And the sunlight exposing JD’s charlatanism will bleed into the shadow world and “the wilderness of mirrors” in which Trump operates, exposing Donald along, as well.
2. Reason number two is the “darkly” part of the phrase “darkly optimistic.” Mr. Lucky, he who has walked between the raindrops for all of his life — thanks to his amorality, ruthlessness, his privilege and “genius” for manipulation, will have had the bad luck of winning the presidency for the four-year period when the civilization–punishing violence of climate change comes undeniably to the fore, exposing the dream of the perpetual growth of the global industrial consumer economy as a hideous fiction. This summer of fucked-up weather arrives right on cue, as we hit 1.5 Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial global temperature levels.
Donald would be the one holding the bag as the president as we cross this frightening and very challenging threshold and there is nothing in his ideology or rhetoric that can accommodate the starkness of this new reality. At this precise historical moment, the force of the weather is poised to overcome the force of his lies. And this would break the spell and finally provoke the crash of his narcissistic supply, leaving him a broken husk of a man.
