It is this hatred of the migrant, the terrorist, and the drug dealer—all seen equally as sociopaths—that evokes an acerbic form of nationalism, a nationalism that is not rooted in love of one’s fellows but in hatred of the outsider. Hatred masquerades as patriotism. The size of the national flag grows, the enthusiasm for the national anthem increases by decibels. Patriotism is reduced to hatred of the migrant, the terrorist, and the drug dealer. It smells acrid—of anger and bitterness, of violence and frustration. The eyes of the workers and the unemployed workers as well as sections of the middle class are turned away from their own problems, from the low wages and the near starvation in their homes, from lack of educational opportunities and provisions for health care, to other problems, problems that are false, that are invented by the new monsters to turn them away from their real problems. It is one thing to be patriotic about flags and anthems. But it is another thing to be patriotic against starvation and hopelessness. The new monsters have taken the second kind of patriotism and thrown it into the fire. Human beings ache to be decent. But that ache is smothered by desperation and resentment, by the diabolical new monsters.
This small book is a collection of fables.
Five brilliant artists and writers confront five of our monsters. Eve Ensler, the American playwright who wrote the play The Vagina Monologues, goes beneath the skin—or should I say orange hair—of US President Donald Trump. Danish Husain, the Indian storyteller and actor, finds himself telling us the story not only of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi but also of the ascension of the extremism of the Sangh Parivar. Burhan Sönmez, the Turkish novelist, ferrets about amidst the bewildering career of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Ninotchka Rosca, the Filipina feminist novelist, unravels the macho world of Rodrigo Duterte. And Lara Vapnyar, Russian-American novelist and essayist, lays bare the sinister sexiness of Vladimir Putin.
There are many other monsters that could have made it into these pages. This is not a comprehensive list, just a suggestive one. We encourage people to write their own essays. In fact, please write them and send them to me (vijay@leftword.com). We will post them on our Left Word Books blog, http://mayday.leftword.com/blog/.
But, for now, settle in and read these five superb essays by these sparkling writers. Their essays do not presume to be neutral. They are partisan thinkers, magical writers, people who see not only the monsters but also a future beyond the ghouls. A future that is necessary. The present is too painful.
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.