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COMMENTARY. When I think about Donald trump I always have the clown monster from the horror movie “It” in my head.
The clown Pennywise terrifies children by forcing them into a nightmare built around their worst fears, where they can no longer distinguish what is real and what is invented, and the children he receives in his violence float, in addition to weightlessness, in his cave underground.
They are said to “float”.
In the same way, Donald Trump has forced us to live in a nightmare of lies and half truths that he has instilled in us by constantly repeating them, repeating them until they become, not true but “as true”, and until our brains become so slow and heavy. of the constant manipulation that in the end we no longer dared to trust our own understanding, or how everything has been before in the world.
It has forced us all to float.
And I think our perception of reality was already disturbed by the fact that he even won the 2016 election.
All opinion polls showed he was hopelessly behind Hillary clinton, all the experts and connoisseurs assured that he simply could not win. It couldn’t happen. The mere fact that he was nominated was an unlikely and tacky joke, and once Election Night was over, everything could be back to order. We had nothing to worry about.
And so we wake up with the opposite.
What could not happen, happened.
As happened with Brexit a few months earlier.
Nothing was as it should be and suddenly we lived in a world where we could no longer take anything for granted.
Like the truth is true and the lie is a lie. Or that decency wins over decency, justice wins and the villain loses.
Do you remember the scare?
During Trump’s first term as president, I feverishly updated the news all the time. Because soon some of his obvious lies, trampling or wrongdoing would be revealed, and he would be forced to stand there in shame and resign.
But no.
For society to function, there must be a basic agreement on the value of truth. If you get caught with a lie, you are ashamed.
Like when Trump and his staff in 2017 claimed that his installation as president drew a crowd larger than Obama 2009, despite the fact that the opposite could easily be seen in all the photographs.
Anyone before, faced with such evidence, had recanted, ashamed to apologize, bowed to the facts, and remained silent.
For society to function, there must be a basic agreement on the value of truth. If you get caught with a lie, you are ashamed.
But not anymore.
On the contrary, you persevere without blinking.
When asked how you could say that Trump’s installation was the most popular when it was not, Trump employees responded Kellyanne conway that it was simply “alternative facts”, so it was good.
Donald Trump elevated shamelessness to ideals: he bragged that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and get away with it, he bragged of abusing women – “grabbing them by the pussy” – to no avail, he compared black civil rights activists with Nazi extremists and thought they were about the same, and so on.
Values no longer apply. None of the old rules of the game.
Since then, the world has been ruled by a clown monster that has forced us all to float.
He has promised one thing, another fantastic thing that will come soon: soon we will have a disarmament agreement with North Korea, soon we will have a trade agreement with China, just wait, it will be a wonderful agreement, you will see it soon. Soon we will have a vaccine, it will be a wonderful vaccine, you will be surprised, very soon, it is only a matter of days, you will see. Soon the pandemic was over, by the way the pandemic is a fabrication, there are still a few weeks to turn it around, by the way it has already turned around and I have heard that you can clean the lungs with disinfectant. We may or may not abandon the Paris Agreement.
We’ll see. I have not decided.
The feeling of unreality has not left us but we have got used to it and it has become our day to day these years.
Among the scariest things about Trump have been his own vague fluidity, promises that were simply thrown away, sudden whims, late-night twitter attacks, his utterly blatant use of the lie and that it didn’t bother him in the least when they convinced him to lie, it has just continued.
The feeling of unreality has not left us but we have got used to it and it has become our day to day these years.
The clown monster has loved that we float, that we float in uncertainty, that it is he who decides and that we must obey all his whims.
This is how we are suddenly approaching the presidential elections in the unreal year 2020.
With the pandemic, it was no longer obvious that Trump would be re-elected. Suddenly his opponent Biden an opportunity.
It was said.
Once again, all opinion polls showed that Trump was helpless. And this time, at least, lessons had been learned from the failed calculations before the last election. This time you can trust the numbers.
At the same time, Trump nonchalantly said that he hadn’t even decided whether to resign if he lost the election. Like I could let it go if I wanted to. A peaceful transfer of power, well maybe, we’ll see.
He has continued to intimidate us. To the last. No rules of the game apply. Without decency. Is not true.
And then all the polls are wrong again!
The election will be a thriller. Trump wins Florida. He proclaims himself the winner. Requires vote counting to stop. Avoided. His victory is huge, he says.
I myself cannot look, or even open the newspapers. Every headline scares me. I have migraines, headaches, and dizziness.
Everything turns, now the nightmare begins again. The one they lovingly and sacredly promised would end.
Until yesterday, when the news came that Pennsylvania had been won by Biden and thus enough electoral votes were secured.
OR?
Despite the fact that the election is over and Biden has won according to all the rules of the art, or rather, according to all the rules of the American electoral system, and despite the fact that the American news agencies have declared Biden the winner and that foreign heads of state and prime ministers have recognized Biden’s victory and congratulated him, even though it is all over, or should end, the world is still holding its breath.
For four years we have lived in a world where lies preceded truth and indecency triumphantly triumphed over decency.
Because Trump himself refuses to admit that he lost. He continues to float and wants at all costs to force all of us to keep floating.
In Svenska Dagbladet today I read a comment where the writer writes “If or when Biden is sworn in as the 46th President of the United States”, that om-et, as if everything was not decided, as if the truth could remain both. in one way or another, as if Trump’s skewed and unrealistic worldview still applies and is a force to be reckoned with, a power to conform to.
I just want to wake up now.
This time, the power of the clown monster should be broken, right?
For four years we have lived in a world where lies preceded truth and indecency triumphed over decency.
For four years we have been forced to listen to Trump’s blatant lies and self-righteous scolding, forced to adjust to his sick and distorted worldview.
It has imposed its poverty, its meanness and its immorality on us.
Now is the time when we can turn our backs on the pathetic man and say never again. Like the ending of the horror movie when Pennywise dies. Like at dawn when the troll bursts in.
Disappear your disgusting and that we never have to see your ugly face again.
Give us back the world and reality.
Let’s not flow anymore.
Jonas Gardell is an author, artist and contributor to the Expressen culture page
