Scientific Electoral Breakthrough!
Scientists are euphoric. They believe they have finally created The Rottenest Major Party Candidate in United States History, or TRMPCUSH for short.
Granted, they have made similar claims before (see the Buchanan Degradation and the Harding Humiliation). “With the aid of supercomputers, we think we found the Holy Grail this time,” said Ray Bildawall, professor of Applied Statistics and Political Resentment at NoneOfTheAbove College. “We tried hard to make sure that the candidate we assembled would be an imminent and active menace to everything we hold sacred.”
Prof. Bildawall outlined the key elements used to create this monstrosity:
*Start young. Find someone who desperately needs to be sent to military school and send him 12 years too late.
*Praise everything. Despite all evidence to the contrary, tell him from an early age he is infallible and that, unlike the Pope, he will land on the Forbes 400 list.
*Playground rules. In adult life, the playground still rules. In the playground we learn to insult people, to repeat cogent arguments (“Did so, you stupid!”) and to crush opponents and make them cry.
*Teach him the “facts” of life. The candidate must learn that facts are annoying, exasperating things that can ruin a person’s life. Two-part solution: avoid them like the Zika virus and then have a ball making up your own.
*Think heroically. The TRMPCUSH must believe his life has been a heroic journey with modern-day Argonauts who have overcome tremendous obstacles to obtain a glorious trophy property such as the Golden Fleece. To show his heroic stature, the candidate will wear the trophy on his head.
*Teach him faith. Not in God, you ninny, but in himself. This faith must be so strong that even after he says something shockingly racist or stupendously inaccurate he can say with a straight face he would never have said such a thing because he is the world’s least racist man and the planet’s preeminent truth-teller. Most humans worry that even if they’ve said the right thing it might have somehow have been inappropriate. In creating TRMPCUSH, this way of thinking has been reversed.
*Knowledge, schmoledge. It is a truth universally acknowledged that we forget much of what we’ve read in books and briefing papers. This makes us gun-shy about trying to cite them in an argument. Such thinking is so negative! A little knowledge—any knowledge—just gets in the way. The candidate must be convinced that he knows everything about everything, even when he knows nothing about anything. How can you run a confidence game if you lack confidence?
*Learn from reality TV. The most important thing to know about reality TV is that it has nothing to do with reality. This means you can create your own reality every day. As Shakespeare said, “Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Creating reality is like ordering off an enormous menu. Say you select 60 bogus conspiracy theories while ignoring obvious facts such as climate change. Why not? A candidate can do this. Always remember: reality is a choice.
*Playing by the rules is so boring. TRMPCUSH knows rules don’t apply to him. He thinks that cheating his partners, investors and students is not only lucrative and fun but also good training for negotiating with world leaders. Maybe after wrangling with NATO allies he’ll walk away with Finland in his pocket. Who knows?
*Live in the moment. TRMPCUSH is a Zen master, reveling in the moment and never knowing what he’ll say or do next. Yes, this makes him the most undisciplined candidate in modern political history. But that’s why he’s TRMPCUSH and you’re not.
*Let the anger out. So many people go through life stifling their feelings, especially their anger. With TRMPCUSH we have created a person who believes that rage is good and that you’re never more genuine than when your normally orange face turns crimson with indignation. Yes, this can scare the children and the horses, but it’s such a powerful tool to stimulate the basest feelings of your base. In programming TRMPCUSH, we have found we can turn the rage dial up to 11 and keep him in a furious frenzy for 24 hours at a time.
“Professor Bildawall, thank you. When will the public meet this paragon you have created?”
“Have you ever been to Cleveland?”
Andrew Feinberg is the author of Four Score and Seven (https://www.amazon.com/Four-Score-Seven-Andrew-Feinberg/dp/0692664009), a novel that imagines that Abe Lincoln comes back to life for two weeks during the 2016 campaign and encounters a candidate who, some say, resembles Donald Trump. He also writes a daily anti-Trump humor page at https://www.facebook.com/MeBabyDonDon.
Image: Chris Piascik/Flickr