Trump vs Demon Trump
The weak of stomach dare not read this grotesque tale of horror! Witness the astonishing true story of an implausible politician and his diabolical shadow
“The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.” - Donald Trump, 1987
Oh the terrible things that Demon Trump is going to do! He’s going to destroy social security, bring an end to women’s rights, trigger World War III, subvert the justice system, end gay marriage, and seize control of the government machinery to declare himself a ruler-for-life - while simultaneously dismantling the entire Federal government. The amazing powers of Demon Trump that are chronicled in the legacy media are apparently unlimited! He’s simultaneously a dangerously fatuous imbecile and a Machiavellian genius capable of outwitting everyone.
Demon Trump is, in other words, a cartoonish supervillain who cannot possibly be stopped by any virtuous hero (for there are none of those in US politics). Warnings about Demon Trump are inevitably encountered in the future tense, and are typically mixed in with reports about what Trump is actually doing (rarely as severe as what Demon Trump could do). Demon Trump is thus a villain from the days to come who plots disaster, hates everyone, and must be stopped before he ruins everything - even if we have to resort to assassination.
What is most astonishing about Demon Trump are the people who believe in him. They include a great many university-educated professionals with otherwise grounded views of existence. They wouldn’t dare suggest that Satan, Mara, or Loki were actual beings - they’d either interpret them metaphorically, or dismiss them entirely. Yet for some reason, they passionately believe in Demon Trump. Many are willing to denigrate all those who voted for Trump’s second presidency by claiming they are ‘low information voters’ or misled by those flexible bugbears ‘misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation’. Faith in Demon Trump practically necessitates such tortured explanations!
Yet while no heroic figure rode a white charger into Washington to confront Demon Trump, there is someone who has to fight Demon Trump every day. His name is Donald Trump. A vain braggard, every inch the self-aggrandising Hollywood cameo-making real estate tycoon he was in a former life, Trump is perpetually forced to wage media war against this shadow creature conjured from the fever dreams of his opponents. What his enemies apparently never see in him is a bombastic New York rich kid-turned-entrepreneur thrown back into the impossible role of the President of the United States largely by these paranoid fantasies about Demon Trump.
For this is the most bizarre aspect of the wild tale of Trump vs Demon Trump. If the FBI had not raided Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s political career would have been over and Demon Trump would have faded into obscurity. Likewise, the trial of Demon Trump was as surreal a circus as ever I’ve witnessed. Trump was convicted of recording a payment to his lawyer as a legal expense, which thanks to the phantasmagoria required to imagine Demon Trump in the first place, was also somehow a felony! The conviction of Demon Trump paradoxically cleared Trump of nearly all wrongdoing - for if Trump had any of Demon Trump’s skeletons in his closet it’s quite unthinkable that the Department of Justice couldn’t legitimately prosecute him for something unequivocally criminal.
Those who didn’t believe in Demon Trump gradually began to recognise that the behaviour of the Biden administration was worryingly akin to the fantastical monster it had conjured. It subverted the justice system in pursuit of Demon Trump, brought our planet the closest it’s been to nuclear war in sixty years, gaslit everyone about the mental state of the President, and spurred assassination attempts against a political rival - not to mention unleashing the worst government censorship the United States has ever experienced thus exacerbating the greatest health disaster in a century. In fighting to stop Demon Trump ‘at any cost’, people were willing to sacrifice anything, even their own sanity.
Thus it was that a narrow sliver of disillusioned voters switched allegiance and begrudgingly voted for Trump rather than against Demon Trump, these being the only options on the ballot. But of course, the resulting electoral victory has not banished Demon Trump... he is still with us, more powerful than ever, lurking ten seconds into the future, evoking imaginary catastrophes, and (ironically) obscuring the Trump administration’s very real excesses. Beyond this, Demon Trump has effectively prevented all those who fear him from ever coming to terms with the appalling government that inadvertently empowered Trump’s return to the White House.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for this alternative view of Donald Trump.
Each of us receives signals from what’s out there, processes these signals with the current state of our mental “machinery”, draws conclusions, and either pushes back on what’s out there or not. The base level “information” that our brain/minds work with is the same whether or not it has come directly from signals in physical reality [1] or from entities in social reality, like this Substack post of yours.
What is the truth about the actual physical reality: Donald J. Trump? How would we know? I’m guessing, but let’s say that on average a quarter of a million new words (in our world’s various languages) about Mr. Trump are placed in social reality every day. The bulk of these words are the result of at least third-hand observations. That is, at best they are words that were placed in social reality by individuals that directly interacted with Mr. Trump, but most of these words are placed in social reality by individuals who are interpreting the statements made by individuals who have not directly interacted with Mr. Trump. Thus, we are all in a fun house of mirrors. Most of what we see are distorted reflections of distorted reflections, etc., of first-order reflections. Prior to this post most US denizens just viewed either blue tinted mirrors or red tinted mirrors so as not to be emotionally disturbed by conflicting views. Now we have another view that disturbs everyone.
In the case of Mr. Trump, there are, on average, a few hundred words and many images, that are actually real, that is, the words were spoken or written by Mr. Trump himself. While second-hand, third-hand, …, nth-hand words about Mr. Trump can be helpful in corralling the truth about Mr. Trump, in my opinion it would be better if more of us focused more on Mr. Trump’s own worlds and direct recordings of his actions.
I wonder what any of our current LLMs would report if they could be exposed just to the totality of all of Mr. Trump’s words and images presently available in social reality.
With empathy for all,
Frank
Note:
[1] For definitions of subjective and objective (social and physical) reality see the Archive section of the Citizen Philosophers Substack.
Nice work here, Chris! Perceptive.