Happy New Year
Hell is Now Open for Business
History, wrote James Joyce, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. I’m still in the liminal period between Christmas and the New Year, and I have to say that politically-speaking, 2025 does not look promising, so I am not yet ready to put my head above the parapet just yet. And so I thought I would bring the New Year in with this nightmare, which I wrote on my old blog in February 2016. Even then, the essential cruelty of Trump and his movement was clear, but despite Hilary Clinton’s manifest shortcomings, I only half-believed that America would be mad enough and bad enough to vote for the gilded monstrosity.
Of course it did, and tragically, incredibly, disgracefully, it’s about to come true a second time nine years later. So much more is known about Trump than was known back in 2016 (which was already bad enough). Back then, he wasn’t known to be a rapist, a convicted felon and an insurrectionist. Now he is, and more than seventy million Americans didn’t care, and to some extent we will all be living in the abyss that these voters have dragged their country into.
So steel yourselves, readers. Find hope, pleasure, comfort and solidarity where you can, because apart from the fact that MAGA is already tearing itself to pieces, there is nothing hopeful or inspirational in what is about to unfold.
FIONA BRUCE: And now we cut to the White House to hear our political editor Laura Kuenssberg cover Donald Trump’s inaugural speech. Laura, can you tell us what’s happening?
KUENSSBERG: Well Fiona, we are really witnessing some extraordinary scenes here on what is truly a momentous occasion.
(Camera pans out to the White House, which has been painted orange. Tens of thousands of people with dyed orange hair are waiting expectantly. Drones fly overhead. Searchlights play across the night sky. In front of the White House a group of men and women are kicking a Mexican to death. )
KUENSSBERG: Hillary Clinton has conceded defeat and said that she accepts the will of the American people, and now the whole world is waiting to hear the inaugural speech from a man who has deed all expectations to become the forty-fifth president of America. And here he is!
(Camera cuts to White House. Strains of the Star-Spangled Banner. Donald J. Trump appears wearing a tuxedo, holding hands with Melania Trump, who blows kisses to the camera. Vice President Sarah Palin is standing beside them, wearing a safari jacket and holding an automatic rifle. Grown men fall weeping to the ground. Women writhe and speak in tongues. Snake handlers play with rattlesnakes. No one is bitten. Trump raises two fists and punches the sky. The crowd does the same. Vice President Palin fires a burst into the air. Accidentally shoots a low-flying drone which crashes into the crowd. )
TRUMP: My fellow Americans! I feel your pain! I share your rage! I lick your spittle! I am Trump!
CROWD: Trump! Trump! Trump!
TRUMP: Hey security, how’d the cripple in the back row get in here? Yeah, the mongoloid. God I want to punch that guy in the face. Isn’t my wife beautiful? Isn’t she beautiful? I love beauty!
CROWD: Me-la-nia! Me-la-nia!
TRUMP: And I will not tolerate ugliness in America! I told you I would win, and I won!
CROWD: Win! Win! Win!
TRUMP: I told you I would whip those pussies and I whipped them! And let me tell you people, if I win, America wins, and if America wins the whole world wins. And if I say I will bring all jobs back to America, then I will. Because I know what jobs are. I hire people. I am not hired. I am Trump. Other politicians are bought, but I buy. Other politicians stay in hotels. I own Las Vegas!
CROWD: Las Vegas! Las Vegas!
TRUMP: Other politicians get money from corporations. I am a corporation. I am money. I am Trump!
CROWD: Trump! Trump! Trump!
LONE VOICE: Liar!
TRUMP: Who said that? Man, I want to punch that guy in the face. Get him out of here! (Security drag away heckler. Some members of the crowd pull him away and kick him to death)
CROWD: Kill! Kill! Kill!
TRUMP: I told you I would build a WALL and I will build a WALL! Because I am a BUILDER and BUILDERS build WALLS! And who will pay for it?
CROWD: Mexico!
TRUMP: And I promise you that tomorrow we will start to build that WALL, and 12 million rapists and thieves are going back to where they came from. And where will we send them?
CROWD: To Mexico! To Mexico!
TRUMP: And I promise you my fellow Americans that you will be safe behind that WALL! And you will be rich behind that WALL! And I say to you, no more Muslims will be coming through that WALL! Because America is a Christian country and I am your own personal Jesus and the Pope is not a Christian and I want to punch him in the face!
CROWD: In the face! In the face!
TRUMP: I will punch ISIS in the face. I will bring back thumbscrews. I will bring back the rack. And I want to tell you that Special Forces have captured 49 members of Islamic State and they will be waterboarded on prime time news tomorrow and they will be shot with bullets dipped in pig fat. And if any of those ragheads even thinks about hurting another American, I will turn their cities into carparks with nukes wrapped in bacon! I will kill their families and the ancestors of their families and their household pets!
SARAH PALIN: Kick! ISIS! Ass! (Fires off another burst)
CROWD: Kill! Kill! Kill! TRUMP: And I promise you that America will be great again! As great as I am! Because I am Trump!
CROWD: Trump! Trump! Trump!
TRUMP: I will make it rain in California!. I will heal the sick! I will make the lame walk! I will make every poor man rich! I will turn your money green! I will give you more money than Donald J. Trump has ever seen. No more big government! No more rotten politicians! No more welfare! No more taxes! Free ice cream!
CROWD: Free ice cream! Free ice cream!
TRUMP: So let my orange hair be a candle in the darkness. Let me be your fluorescent tangerine dream. Let my balls be your balls. God bless America and anyone who has anything to say about that, just let him come here and I will punch him in the face!
(Trump bends Melania over backwards and takes her in a long lingering kiss to the strains of the Beatles’ Revolution. Sarah Palin fires off another burst from her rifle and accidentally shoots one of the security snipers off a rooftop. Some members of the crowd spot a woman in a hijab and pull it off and begin beating her to death. Fighter planes carve out the shape of Donald Trump’s head in smoke trails in the sky. Trump and Melania walk back into the White House. Cut to a smiling Laura Kuenssberg, standing beside an Abba tribute band singing ‘money, money, money, must be funny, in a rich man’s world.’ )
KUENSSBERG: Well Fiona, I don’t think anyone here tonight will ever forget it!
CROWD: U.S.A! U.S.A!
(Camera returns to studio).
Cut.
Matt, when you say "the abyss that these voters have dragged their country into" it implies that the country isn't already in a dark place. I would argue that it's a matter of perspective. For many Americans, life has been difficult and stressful for quite a long time. For large parts of the rest of the world, US actions have been very damaging and destructive over the past 80 years. So, the abyss has always been there, its just that it was better hidden. It is wrong to think that America is moving from a good place to a bad one. It is actually moving from a bad place to a worse one. Trump will probably make life substantively worse for many, but it is also possible that for the rest of the world, outside Europe, at least, things may improve. He seems to have little interest in anything beyond his own back door. And in his case, this is almost literal, rather than metaphorical. Yes, he has threatened Panama and Greenland, as well as saying ominous things about Gaza and Ukraine, but his real focus is on making life better for himself and his uber-rich cronies. Anything that requires effort that does not do this will probably quickly be dropped.
It’s a lot more coherent than most of the guff he’s spouted in the last couple of years.