Shakespeare’s Trump, Act II, Scene III
The Blue Room.
Enter AMNON and AMIN, his uncle. AMIN bears a cross.
AMIN.
Thou thronging fools! Have faith, and be at peace!
Imperfect vessel though The Donald be,
A useful tool he can be made to halt
The evils of abortions and the spread
Of godless faith in naught. The cypress cross
The golden T conceals to do its work.
AMNON.
Whose work? Is cross concealer or conceal’d?
It can’t be both, dear uncle, and I find
The more one speaks of Trump, the less he seems
To represent abstractions save himself.
AMIN.
Can both it not be, though? Doth not our Lord
Re-educate us one can equal three?
’Tis said one cannot God and Mammon serve,
Yet God enriches some who show Him love,
And Trump seems prime example, his own name
Synonymous with trick-taking success.
AMNON.
“Trick-taking” translates to “accepting lie,”
And Trump’s name once was Drumpf, my uncle, as
Thy name was Mubarak, “of Allah blest.”
I’ll not begrudge thy change to “Marc Amin,”
Indeed, I, Amnon, often feel I am
Not that I am. I only mean that we
Define our names, as characters we choose,
And Trump’s therefore saith more about his tale
As penn’d by his, and not Jehovah’s, hand.
AMIN.
The two are one, their fingers clasp-conjoin’d.
Thou art correct, my faith is new, and thus
My faithfulness to pewmates I must prove.
I envy thy collegiate luxury
Of picking ’part the gears of every work,
Defining this as that, and not-that this.
But life is contradiction. To believe
With truest loyalty is to desert
Logician’s sense for a baptismal font
Of foam by groundless salt-spray tempest-tost.
This spa-whirlpool would soothe thy careworn mind.
Immers’d, thy fires would bubble out behind.
Exit.
AMNON.
O uncle, who once taught me how to spot
The fallacy of bandwagons, now held
In rigid gridlock evangelical
And train’d to love thy cage with parrot-speech.
It only aids con men to blame their marks,
But ignorance doth sting with painful sparks.
Enter AMON, AMUN.
AMNON.
I shall concede the Charlottesville Trump talk
Did end as well as one could hope, with love,
But drown’d misdeed in false equivalence
By “many-siding” Heather Heyer’s death
And other one-direction’d injuries.
And furthermore, this was his best attempt
At decency, cheeks swell’d with pettiness
He normally expels with ev’ry breath,
Like a malignant chipmunk foraging.
AMON.
Betrayal! How dast thou so speak, turncoat?
Trump hath no decent aspects! None! “Love?” Hate!
Thou callest thou reporter? Art thou drunk
On port, and then re-port-ing hourly?
I had consider’d a subscription to
Thy newspaper, but now, thou’rt cancel’d, wretch!
AMNON.
Let us not clash o’er trivialities.
There are so many reasons to loathe Trump.
Among my peers, some share your lens of thought.
With mental Photoshop, they saturate
The White House orange-man as tiger-red,
Omnipotent, his ev’ry word attack,
Chessmaster, knowing good and choosing ill.
But I regard him as incapable
Of well behaving. Truly I can say
That though the crime-Don lies and lies again,
He also lies expos’d, that in his lies
There lies a fundamental truth he tells.
His heart conceals no mysteries, no depths.
All hear it who are honest with themselves,
But honesty with self seems passing rare.
We’d rather let a cult dictate our thoughts,
And throw cartoons as lizard brains dictate
Upon the words of others, laugh or frown.
AMON.
I was not listening, Trump-blower. Plagh!
AMUN.
Ye both are fools. Trump is our only friend,
Our last defense against th’deprav’d cabal
Who vampirizes kidnapp’d children’s blood.
Aye, T is Q. Q, T. And cute he is!
AMNON
Begone, ye blockheads! Block’d! I’ll hear no more!
Thy ignorance doth not my knowledge match!
If egotist that sounds, so mote it be!
AMNON chases AMON and AMUN offstage.
AMNON.
’Tis I who earn’d my journalist’s degree,
Unlike WordPress’s false authorities.
The Olivetown Observer-State takes pride
In publishing my work. The war for truth
Needs submariners willing to engage.
Enter ANTON JACKSON, a publisher.
ANTON.
It gives me, Anton Jackson, pleasure great
That I have serv’d our Olivetowner folk
As publisher of the Observer-State
’Til recently I slipt the day-job’s yoke,
As it will no doubt grant divertissement
(And with his newfound town munic’pal bond)
To your new publisher, one Lincoln Grint,
Who eager is t’expand his fame beyond
Mere Trump-supporting billionaire. Of course,
His politics shall not influence print.
For if they did, I’d leave with some remorse,
And with this post I’d at such feeling hint.
Exit.
AMNON.
Without a voice, we lose that which we loose,
And voiceless news doth soon become a noose.
I shall resume my résumé-rewrite,
This sub is sunk; I swim on in despite.