Much like the heroine in the last twenty minutes of a gritty slasher-flick, it's become apparent to us that no one is coming to save America. That which we see around us is the end of the line, and the clothes on our backs are how we'll be found in a few months, once the smell starts to bother Canada and they call the authorities. There are ways of dying with dignity, but this isn't one of them. Perhaps if we'd made different choices? It's probably best, at this point, to stop agonising over the why's and wherefore's of how we ended up in this dingy basement and to begin making peace with our Maker.
We're speaking, of course, about our national kidnapper, 'ole Tiny Digits Trump himself. His coronation is not a sure thing. We could be saved by a riot, nuclear Armageddon - maybe even our one token black friend? But more realistically, we will watch any remaining hope evaporate over the next few months in the run-up to the GOP nominating convention. Trump misunderstands the American political system better than any professional politician of the last century. His rise has been noted with quantities of ink that are more analogous in size to the North Sea than to a single barrel. As a phenomenon, it has been disbelieved ('this can't be happening'), derided ('it's happening, but only amongst those who wear tinfoil hats'), and at times, impossibly debunked ('we've run the numbers again and can confirm that this isn't happening at all') by a journalistic class that cannot escape its own visceral reaction to a single man who has, in less than a year, destroyed decades of hallowed tradition.
His punch-drunk stumble towards the White House has been classed as and analysed in any number of literary and psychological frames. Trump has been diagnosed from afar with many mental illnesses, portrayed as everything from a modern William Jennings Bryan, to PT Barnum, to Mussolini. It's comedy. It's drama. It's tragedy. It's dramacomgedy. Bad Shakespeare, Lucille Ball and a Klan rally all rolled into one. You laugh until you realise that you've been sobbing for weeks. The average voter, on both sides of the aisle, is afforded the rare opportunity to reflect upon the state of the world, and then to boil with self-righteous moral umbrage on all possible sides of all possible issues. No wonder that they've revelled in the opportunity. It's not about chasing the rage dragon, it's not about burning down the establishment. It's about why horror is its own genre.
Trump is horror. Horror has the potential to create comedy, to carry drama, or to portray tragedy - but it remains very much its own creature. The main goal of a horror is to elicit a negative emotional response. It is broadly defined because horror is deeply personal, a reflection on one's generation and society. Popular horror has shifted over time to reflect the most prominent fears of the day. If vampires stop eliciting a strong negative reaction, then you stop writing about vampires. This is something Trump seems to instinctively understand. It's more than a question of relevance. It's about being relevant in the right way, in avoiding the 'smirking optimism' which HP Lovecraft derided as the pitiful endgoal of materialistic sophistication. And if anyone is qualified to explain horror, it's the man who brought us the original Cthulhu:
Naturally we cannot expect all weird tales to conform absolutely to any theoretical model. Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabrics have their dull spots. Moreover, much of the choicest weird work is unconscious; appearing in memorable fragments scattered through material whose massed effect may be of a very different cast. Atmosphere is the all-important thing, for the final criterion of authenticity is not the dovetailing of a plot but the creation of a given sensation... The one test of the really weird is simply this—whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe’s utmost rim. And of course, the more completely and unifiedly a story conveys this atmosphere, the better it is as a work of art in the given medium.
Because Trump is horror, it matters not at all that there is no storyline, an incoherent script, and bad acting. He can jump around, leaving massive logical fallacies in his wake, and when confronted with their existence, he can dive straight in to the next attention-getting plot device. The consistency in his inconsistencies is a comfort to his audiences, who are also, terrifyingly, his voters.
The real challenge for his campaign is not dealing with the avalanche of bad press, the worst of which is comprised of those telling unvarnished versions of his life's story. It's avoiding the acquired boredom with the plot twist technique that has plagued M. Night Shyamalan, who has been panned by critics and fans alike for his one-trick pony work. His ability to accomplish this, win the election, and thus bring about the end of days will not rest upon his ability to devise a new trick; rather, it will depend upon how reliably the American public can be tricked into believing that they haven't seen this film before.
