The most effective way to speak out against Donald Trump (and what he represents) may be to not speak at all. The candidate’s own words make the best case against him; a would-be prosecutor has only to point to the latest damning audio clip. Still, as new evidence that indicates his absolute unfitness for office arrives daily (or twice daily, or thrice daily), some us who would already be writing poems or singing songs or drawing cartoons feel compelled to make those poems and songs and cartoons about Trump. We lampoon him on Facebook; we ridicule him on Twitter. Believe me, he deserves it.
It’s good that we can express ourselves in this way, if we choose to. Earlier this month, a German court was debating whether a satirical poem that criticized a foreign leader—in this case, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan—rose to the level of “abusive criticism,” a crime in Germany. Before the case went to court, Chancellor Angela Merkel weighed in against the satirist; ultimately, the argument for free artistic expression won out. (The poem, by the way, is deeply silly; its criticism of Erdogan mirrors Marco Rubio’s late-winter criticism of Trump. Want to drive an actual or would-be autocrat crazy? Say that he has a small penis.) But again: this case went to court. And in America we have Trump threatening to “open up” libel laws and sue newspapers.
The aim of these dreamed-up lawsuits? You guessed it: “win lots of money.” Jumping past the stupidity of this particular gambit, let’s note that “winning” and “money” are the alpha and omega of Trump’s imagination. This is a man with no use for ethics, for morality; he speaks only in the language of selfish entitlement. “We’re gonna take our country back,” he sternly tells his supporters, as if America were nothing but a transferable piece of real estate. And make no mistake: he’s using the royal “we.” It doesn’t include the rest of us.
In this past Sunday’s New York Times, Richard Conniff recalls having compared Trump, in a 2002 half-joking sociological study, to a hangingfly. (I know: what’s a hangingfly? According to Conniff, it’s “a type of insect that catches and kills other insects, then uses its prize to seduce a passing female.”) After watching the bizarre and repulsive Access Hollywood video, Conniff has changed his position: he now considers Trump “lower than a hangingfly.” In my house, my daughters and I try not to kill insects (hangingflies included, I guess); we have a cup we use to trap bugs and redirect them outside. But we do squash mosquitoes, because they’re hard to capture and they seem intent on biting us.
Which brings me to a poem I’d like to offer in closing: D. H. Lawrence’s “The Mosquito.” Lawrence can’t be sued; he died in 1930. Here are several excerpts:
When did you start your tricks,
Monsieur?What do you stand on such high legs for?
Why this length of shredded shank,
You exaltation?. . .
It is your trump,
It is your hateful little trump,
You pointed fiend,
Which shakes my sudden blood to hatred of you:
It is your small, high, hateful bugle in my ear.Why do you do it?
Surely it is bad policy.They say you can’t help it.
If that is so, then I believe a little in Providence protecting the innocent.
But it sounds so amazingly like a slogan,
A yell of triumph as you snatch my scalp.. . .
Queer, what a big stain my sucked blood makes
Beside the infinitesimal faint smear of you!
Queer, what a dim dark smudge you have disappeared into!