America, please don’t look at Donald Trump like he’s a pube on your toothbrush. Don’t act surprised.
Don’t treat Donald Trump like the unexpected smear of vomit on a city bus seat – we can all see that you’re the one who’s green and swaying.
Without any help from Donald Trump, you built a prison on a foreign island to circumvent your own laws, and defended freedom by removing the right to a trial. You built remote-controlled war planes to drop bombs on wedding parties, and conscripted thousands of young men to die in un-winnable wars – so please don’t act like Donald Trump is the only yellow drip on America’s toilet seat.
Don’t claim that an economy built on the uncompensated labour of tortured of slaves, and later the uncompensated labour of their imprisoned descendants, shouldn’t give rise to a politician motivated by greed and oblivious to humanity. Don’t be shocked that sticking your political wick into juicy wet piles of cash didn’t conceive a humbler man to lead you.
Dear America, Trump was formed in your image, not you in his. So don’t proclaim that a society in thrall to photoshopped asses, Kanye West and three-metre waffle stacks should be led by a reality TV host with more nuance and decorum. Don’t pretend his misogyny is out of step with your abortion laws, your absence of paid maternity leave, your rape culture. Don’t act like this wasn’t on the cards.
America, please don’t feign innocence at The Donald’s words like a driver caught plucking bogeys at a red light. Don’t you dare tell the interred Japanese, the lynched African-American, the exterminated native tribes, the students of Sandy Hook and Columbine that you are confused by his 20 billion dollar walls and his promises of nuclear apocalypse. Please don’t move away from Donald Trump like he’s Mexico’s fart in a crowded elevator.
Dear America, stop claiming that Donald Trump isn’t the inevitable, anguished end of the American Dream, when for two hundred years you held men like him up as its pinnacle.
Don’t look at the rest of us, America, with that bemused expression, as if the Trump-dump you’ve just left un-flushed in the toilet bowl of humanity was the work of poor old Canada. We’re not stupid, America. We know what’s happening; we call all see it, lying there in its own muddy water, studded with sweetcorn stars and stripes. And yes, we can all smell it too.
So please stop pretending, America.
The whole world knows whose turd he is.
This is a poem by Saul Bellow. Not sure if it has a title.
My Writing Life 