TRUMP AND DEUS EX MACHINA

A God on a Golden Chariot.  Drawn by horses, dragons.  A God elevated to resolve a play - elevated by a machine; crane, rising secret floor through a trap door, coming down from a harness on a wire.  Here he comes to save the day.  What have we got?  Trump's gold escalator.  Slow, gold.  The God stands tall, proud, deliberate.  He is carried to the world.  The entrance of savior.  Here he comes. Here he comes.  Add any soundtrack you want.  The elevator is slow and steady and can take any beat from Bolero to A Space Odysssey to Underdog's theme song. 

Trump is a performance-artist savant.  This slow gold entrance mesmerizes people, and the media that can't take their eyes off him.  The media awaits his entrance on the landing, filming every escalator beat.  And his gold elevator too.  The gold doors closing, bringing the God up up up to make decisions to save the patria mia.  Madonnamia!  The media has stayed riveted - since Trump's first escalator entrance announcing his bid  for President on June 16, 2015 - Melania in flowing white, the stoic Goddess steps before him, blessing the God's entrance.  His feet don't even need to meet the floor.  He doesn't take mortal steps.  DEUS EX MACHINA.  The machine does it for him.

I remember where I was on that day.  Sloan-Kettering with my Mom.  We both had appointments.  It was grueling.  We went to V.T.'s for steak pizzaiol'.  That is where we saw the gods descent on the golden escalator.  New Yorkers couldn't believe it.  We all started howling, laughing, talking.  For me and Mom it was a needed respite, television, on a rough New York day, with our cancers at bay.  We were giantly amused.  Better than a Broadway show.  We made friends with the people at the next table.  New Yorkers needed each other that night.  The waiter dripped steak juice on my new hat.  We were all in a frenzy.  We sat outside The Hungarian Pastry Shoppe for cappuccini and hamentoshen.  Passer-bys shouted "Are you crazy!" and "No F--- Way!" to my question -- "Trump for President?"   He wasn't getting any support on Amsterdam Avenue.  We should have all went into Saint John the Divine and prayed at that very moment, or taken to the streets that night -- instead of laughing, enjoying, watching the grand performance-art of it all.  The sport of T.V..

Mom and I watched Trump on T.V. for the next year.  Then she died.  And the fun was over.  You know what happened. He got in. She would not have believed it. 

TRUMP AND THE SECRET
I know one thing.  Everyone I know who bought into the book and film "The Secret" voted for Trump.  Every single one.  Folks prone to snake oil.  Folks prone to big godly answers.  Folks seeking divine intervention for problems humans get their minds twisted to solve.   Trump is the best snake oil salesman I ever saw.  He is all sales.  All sales.  Everything I avoid.  Price point.  Point of Sale.  Marketing.  Lying.  Manipulating. Business.  Humans equal just two feet to sell two shoes to.  One head to sell a hat to.  One brain to sell a hand-held device to.  Period.  Soul-less.  Trump knows "The Secret."  Convinced himself and the world he would win.  He picked off  18 Republican competitors one by one, like Clint Eastwood with a six-shooter.  He knows The Secret.  Hillary should have stopped being so hard-working and done a little voudou; read "The Secret" - mesmerized the populace a little more.  It is television after all.

"Reality T.V. come to life," Rosette Capotorto told me. 

All too real.  I went out into the multitudes on the streets, the tidal wave of protest.  And now the organizing begins, the people gathering, making phone calls, taking what action they can think of.  Marching.  I remember the phone trees of the Act-Up movement.  There was something doable about that.  Each person called the next person on the list to tell them the meet-up point for the next protest.  One calls one.  I miss that.  Now my activism is diffuse.  Digital.  In a million directions with words, dots on a screen, reacting to politics on a screen.  I am a consumer of screens.  And I hate it.  I haven't been to a veritable piazza in a while.  I'm ready to go back.  Bari, Naples, somewhere with a fountain flanked by a church and a caffè.  I hope the people in the piazza are not all staring at individual screens when I get there, and that someone actually says "Ciao" again, and makes eye contact.  I trust people still cruise in person, and not only on screens.  Closing this screen for now...