{"id":684,"date":"2026-08-08T07:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T07:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=684"},"modified":"2026-08-08T07:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T07:34:10","slug":"watching-trumps-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=684","title":{"rendered":"Watching Trump’s Apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A certain kind of helplessness has always been part of our arrangement at the movies. After all, we did nothing to save Marion Crane. That poor, pretty woman had been set up from the start. Don\u2019t we feel that as she keeps undressing? So it\u2019s hardly a surprise after 40 minutes that she steps into a shower and finds a knife waiting for her. Not our fault, we said, as we staggered out of Psycho. And there was no one in the lobby waiting to arrest us as accessories to murder.<\/p>\n

Read more The chew toy that ate my small business<\/a><\/p>\n

Well, of course not, you are saying \u2014 don\u2019t be silly; don\u2019t be absurd! How were we responsible, or able to intervene in that beautifully calculated slaughter? It was just a movie, spasms on a screen, in another realm. The motel called itself Fairvale in northern California. Try looking that up. It doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

But I can\u2019t help wondering whether watching from the dark has groomed us in our cold-blooded helplessness. Is it that in preferring to watch, we have felt the advancing grip of our distance, or apathy?<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

It was the summer of 2026 \u2014 so hot in so many places, with the water running low \u2014 but there was a chill in the air.<\/p>\n

This is how it felt. On some mornings you could say, it can\u2019t be long now. In every amiable Fairvale we told ourselves the writing was on the wall. His approval ratings were slipping down, in the mid thirties by then. His iron support was turning rusty. His people were growing bored with him. So many were feeling short of money while he kept boasting of how rich and golden he was. His crucial gift, his energy, was on the blink.<\/p>\n

The best year we\u2019ve ever had! He said.<\/p>\n

Wait for the next election, we promised ourselves, and see the joyous return to order. Is that what you said to your children, in your shower, or to yourself? As if all the spilled water and blood could be coaxed back in the bottle, and the screwtop made tight again. The way things always worked in the past.<\/p>\n

After all, how could the greatest nation on Earth (that phrase is copyrighted, but I\u2019ll take a chance with it) sit back and let a monster of greed and self-glory run amok? How could we not see that he was a champion in the contest for the worst ever, reliable only in being wrong about everything, a leader who hated us (because we were not him \u2014 the gravest offense in the gaze of Narcissus)? How could we stand living with him when our one protection was not a court or a congress but his constant incompetence?<\/p>\n

No one could deny much of this. We had had time enough to get to know him. Hadn\u2019t we voted for him twice? Hadn\u2019t that made our idiocy clear? Wasn\u2019t that a glimpse of our apathy, just sitting in the dark watching it all happen? Saying there\u2019s nothing I can do.<\/p>\n

In that summer of 2026 there was a lassitude, as if it was hard for us to get up out of our seats in the dark. We were so accustomed to whatever went on, like people in a theater watching the movie play, and knowing that some machine was grinding it out so that there was no point in crying \u201cStop!\u201d or intervening. You see, no matter how profoundly the spasms on the screen may move us \u2014 and we have had lovely moments; remember Fred Astaire \u2014 still we cannot get into the picture and dance with Fred. We are only onlookers when maybe we went into the dark and took our seats hoping we were significant.<\/p>\n

So we would be alright again (never mind great) \u2014 because to be alright is so sweet, and a chance to relax. The most annoying thing he had done was simply to block the alright and the have a nice day. He had killed ease and relaxing. He had imposed a suppressed nervous breakdown on all of us, a mixture of dismay and exhaustion, a broad daylight darkness that was always there as our phone \u2014 that faithful screen \u2014 broke the news and our hearts every day.<\/p>\n

So lassitude set in, and we told ourselves to make the best of things before he was over, before proper transmission was resumed. And sometimes we were a little wry and fatalistic \u2014 irony can be rather cute, and it passes the time \u2014 as if to admit we knew, beyond reality and metaphor, how we were truly in the dark.<\/p>\n

And it was part of that dark that the forces on our side could seem fragile or achingly tired. So many of us were reduced to \u201cunsubscribe\u201d just to be free of the daily plea of candidates who wanted a mere but constant $3, our signature, or a hundred stallions (with a matching grant for oats and the blacksmith), to maintain the fight that had to be fought. There was a decline in the number of people who turned out for more protest marches, and even marches themselves stopped happening. After all, it was a hot summer and there was allure in going to the beach and watching the endless ocean. A worry had arisen, who knew if it might be the last beach of your life? It was the summer of The Odyssey, but we stayed home.<\/p>\n

Home was not going well, however. The organization of the opposition party \u2014 our people? \u2014 was reported in disarray. The party, the official set-up, had funding troubles. Candidates were abandoned because dead bodies and ideas had been sniffed out in their closets. The possible leaders (those who might be a new HE!) were measured in their drawbacks. And in the anxiety to win whatever contest it would be, we realized that so many suitors to Penelope were actually unsuited \u2014 because they were gay, female, black, old, young, radical, alive. Was there not one person, halfway photogenic and vacant, who could be reckoned charismatic enough to fit the bill? \u201cHow can anyone be charismatic yet vacant?\u201d you ask. We\u2019re getting there.<\/p>\n

Hadn\u2019t Joe Biden once slipped a notch or two past cognition \u2014 past being able to admit that he was no longer equipped to be our leader? Vacancy is a tricky thing. How was our opposition and vitality to get over that fatal failure, and face itself in the mirror as fit to be on a screen delivering the speeches?<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

How was any Fairvale to digest the whispered rumor that our defining laws \u2014 the documents of the great project \u2014 were like a cheese with so many holes. It was not just a matter of repeating the adage that democracy was the best of all the worst forms of government. Was it a matter of understanding that our electoral system was poised for corruption, interference and all the injunctions and dead ends that would nullify a fair election? Was it possible that the foundational principles of American originality were humbug?<\/p>\n

Read more Bach\u2019s lesson for the AI age<\/a><\/p>\n

More than that, wasn\u2019t it likely that he \u2014 under pressure \u2014 would see that his only move was to declare some state of emergency. With a court that would back him up, as was its habit, or in an emergency so complete that the court itself might be retired?<\/p>\n

There were Fairvales that said this was impossible, or ought not to be allowed \u2014 or what are we meant to do? In Fairvale the majority opinion was that it would prefer not to. Prefer not to do what? Whatever. The lassitude overlapped with a premonition of defeat or concession. Some said the protest marches are beside the point. The only thing that would impede the monstrousness was a general strike. What is that? It is a time when some kind of \u201ceveryone\u201d takes to the street, abandons their role in the economy, and sits down on the ground to block the intersections in traffic, business and social media presence.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou mean I have to get up and not sit down?\u201d we ask. \u201cI can\u2019t stay seated in the dark? I have to take the chance that I will be seized and beaten by uniforms, that I may be arrested and put in hideous cells? That\u2019s not very nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it may need to be done in such numbers that the arrests make their own jam of bodies as they become more than all the ICE camps can contain.<\/p>\n

By then, or even a little sooner, he may have addressed the nation, and said he had the answer \u2014 hasn\u2019t he always had the answers so that we were supposed to ignore the science of questions? But what he needs is an ultimate state of emergency, one that trumps all the others. A United States of Emergency. And he is not always an idiot. So he may come to the sad conclusion. \u201cThat\u2019s what they\u2019re telling me,\u201d he\u2019ll say (he can do gravity in his lamentation sing-song voice) \u201cthat the best thing about a war in a shithole desert region is that you can drop a big one without the damage getting out of hand.\u201d Do you believe he has the grace, the charity and forgetfulness, that would hold back from that? That would prefer not to? Having to decide is a big gamble.<\/p>\n

Yes, you\u2019re right, you can smell satire in the morning, like napalm. I\u2019m playing at Apocalypse \u2013 and that movie genre is more popular than ever. (We can kill millions now that it\u2019s only CGI; aren\u2019t you nostalgic for Michael Corleone telling Robert Duvall they could kill anyone?). So summon your last courage in taking on the gamble of saying it won\u2019t really happen, will it? Isn\u2019t it pretty to think so?<\/p>\n

If that amounts to realism, or madness (at the end, we won\u2019t know one from the other), it may be clear that since 1945 at least we have been playing a game called Distractions. It has amounted to a steady face off between those who have and those who have not, between a handful and the multitudes. Or even him against all of us. I know, it\u2019s sort of Marx Brothers that the American project should come down to a God against the rest of us. Christopher Nolan guessed it: the gods are coming home for a finale.<\/p>\n

In our rising dismay, we don\u2019t have to go to the movies. The big shows are out there all around us, with simple punchy titles, like Epstein or Iran. They have all been blockbusters for a weekend or two, before they get edged out for the next coming attraction, that might be Warming, or AI, or \u2026 the latest comedy? I\u2019ll predict, it\u2019s Arizona getting 40% less water. Let\u2019s call it Dry.<\/p>\n

Of course, this is fantasy, a noir romance. It could have its weekend. But the desert is waiting and watching our show. It knows it has always prevailed.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me get this straight. Are we talking a movie or a series?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still open at this point.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOpen makes me nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are unsettling times. Christian Bale is interested in playing the producer.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe guy who\u2019s putting the show together?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we open it just as Trump goes into retirement.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is farce, noir farce? Help me with the concept.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re saying screwball disaster.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the producer, our guy, he\u2019s having a breakdown?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he has the time. Being on deadline keeps him busy.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cTell me about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s high comedy with a shot of horror. Or vice versa. We\u2019re going to fit Olivia Wilde in.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWho does she play?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know yet. We\u2019ll cook up a girl.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe I\u2019m sitting here talking about this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGot it. That\u2019s why we want Seth Rogen playing you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re sure Trump would do this? He looks so tired now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a ton of money he\u2019ll do it. He wants to keep his movie going. You know how many twenties there are in a ton?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019ll want script approval?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cKnow what he said \u2014 he can make you laugh \u2014 he said, \u2018Makes no difference. I never follow the script.\u2019 \u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHow many is it, in a ton?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNine hundred and eighteen thou.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI am seeing it as a movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow so?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t do the end of the world as a series. Not if you want to be renewed. That\u2019s 18 mill?\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more The twilight of the ladyboss<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s cheap at that price\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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