I can’t be the only writer who sees the creative possibilities of the Trump habitation of the White House. The entire situation is set up perfectly for a sit-com, with an arrogant, blustering, slightly out-of-it father as president, a gorgeous but completely unaware 3^rd trophy wife, a bevy of ex-wives constantly stopping in on the White House making demands, three bumbling adult kids doing all they can to profit off their father’s fame and position, a self-serving son-in-law, and a little boy, the latest child and pampered offspring of the president, who is so privileged he cannot even begin to fathom the importance of his father’s decision on the people of the country. The mix is rich in comic possibilities.

I can see it providing week after week of comic situations as the outside world gradually spirals down into an abyss of chaos and destruction (mentioned as side info in ordinary conversation). Kind of a dark comedy. Here’s just a sampling of the possible episodes:

Episode 1

Trump has trouble finding his way through the White House. His wife can’t find her way either and limits herself to two adjacent rooms. Trump’s adult kids have to talk him through, room-by-room, to get him from one meeting to another. Trump mishears the instructions and finds himself in closet after closet. Merriment ensues.

Episode 2

Melania tries to settle into her role as 1^st Lady. However, she keeps gets phone calls, emails and texts from old boyfriends blackmailing her with sex tapes & porn videos. She sells White House decorations to buy them off. Trump comes into rooms, wondering what happened to that portrait of Lincoln that used to be on the wall, etc. Son-in-law keeps shoving executive orders that profit only him in front of Trump to sign.

Episode 3

The three adult Trump kids tear through the White House, looking through closets, desks and cupboards looking for objects that can be sold for profit. The oldest boy is constantly on his phone, doing deals with foreign leaders and corporate heads that profit himself. He is constantly interrupted by his father’s calls for help finding his way around the White House. In between conversations between the adult kids and hunting for saleable items, the daughter takes continuous calls from her children’s nanny.

Episode 4

The Trump ex-wives descend on the White House, demanding access to state events and access to perks of the executive office. They make themselves at home in the White House, to Trump’s consternation and the visible fury of Melania, whom the ex-wives treat with complete contempt. Trump’s adult kids try to help him get the ex-wives out but are put in their place by the matrons. The lesser-known adult child of one of his exes makes an appearance, but Trump has no idea who she is.

Episode 5

Trump’s young son tries to get comfortable with life in the White House. The Secret Service agents become his closest friends. He bumbles into important meetings, where his father asks him for his help and advice on crucial world issues. The child occasionally finds his father wandering around and has to lead him back to the private quarters of the White House. The boy takes a few calls from world leaders while waiting for his father to find his way to the Oval Office.

These are just the bare bones of the most obvious story lines. Surely, you yourself could think of story lines that would make plausible episode in the sit-com that is Trump Goes to the White House. 

Maybe someone with artistic talent can set up a graphic novel on the subject, with weekly installments based ongoing, real life events. I’m sure we will all be needing the comic relief as long as Trump holds the White House.

Channeling Ursula LeGuin Part 2 - The Adaptors (cont'd)

Not sure where I'm going with this. Any suggestions?

....
 

Marcus had inherited a sufficient amount of his line’s ‘desire to please’ to feel sad at his father’s disappointment.  Every time he touched the traditional guitar, every time he touched paint to canvasere, every time he put words together on the composer, he was aware of the waywardness of his brain and emotions. He was in a chronic state of reining himself in and endured a constant state of tension. He feared he would eventually succumb to suicide like others of his kind. He was clearly a poor design. A misfire. What would happen to him when he was fully grown? Would he be able to take on the duties and privileges of his rank? What kind of women would accept someone like him into a pair-bond?

Jonathan was the only one of his peers who understood, Jonathan who had mastered the art of deception. Jonathan suspected he came from a line of old actors, who could take on the characteristics of their environment without difficulty and without compromising their inner selves. Their behavior was just a cloak they donned for the occasion, and the assimilation was seamless. This ability came so easily to Jonathan that he tried to impart the skill to Marcus, without success. Marcus always knew he was playing a part, donning a falsity.

“It’s not that hard, Jonathan would say. “Look—see that guy over there? You’re him. Get into his skin. Feel the simplicity. It’s just a surface layer. You don’t need to know anything else. Just stay at that level. Feel on that level. Talk on that level. Play with it a little.  Before you know it, you don’t even have to think about it.”

“I can’t do it for more than a few minutes. It exhausts me.”

“Just keep practicing. Try it with different people. You’ll get the hang”

But even Jonathan fell victim to an ‘accident’ provoked by his reckless behavior at a gathering one night. His constant antics revealed his real self. And Marcus found himself alone with his own rebellion. That was perhaps the turning point. That was when he knew that deception would never be enough.

Ever notice how the best speculative fiction always has an element of sociological or psychological reality to it?  Here's something I'm working on, tentatively titled The Adaptors:


When the tribunal came to power it was only natural that they seek the best way to consolidate that power among the populace. They looked for those personality types who were most inclined to crave a “favored” position in the hierarchy. This tendency was not difficult to test for, the questions plumbed the applicants views on ‘traditional values,’ acquisitiveness, imagination and ambition. It was easy to sort out who would march along with the tribunal to continue to receive their advantages.

Problems occurred with the children. This singular adaptiveness could not be relied upon to pass on to continuing generations. In fact, a disturbing number of the offspring tended to be otherwise, which caused loss of status and its attendant material advantage—which made the parents unhappy. So they stated selecting for adaptability at conception, which made the whole system work much more smoothly. Over time, however, even that became a delusion, as if the genetic adaptability itself changed into unusual behaviors over a period of time. Fewer and fewer truly adaptive children were born. No matter how hard the geneticists worked on it, they couldn’t reach reliable compliance. The jello-like matter of the code kept morphing into different combinations.

David felt this failure deeply as he looked at his son. The boy had passed all the tests, pre-birth, or he wouldn’t be here, but something was still out of sync. He was well trained in all aspects of culture, as his family’s position dictated, but he still seemed to wander outside the bounds.

Though the young people were given a certain amount of leeway in their adolescent developmental years, it was all kept within pre-defined limits. Anyone who scouted too far from the norm they were taken out, though no one was allowed to know it as such. They just became victims of their own recklessness—a less to the others—albeit they were helped in their demise. Of course, these individual were never allowed to reach the age were they were allowed to reproduce.

                             *                        *                       *

Corporate Mind

Lately, I’ve spent time in the company of what I can only call ‘corporate types.’ I call them that because they displayed so many of the characteristics of corporate life, and in fact, they all work in corporate environments. But it has so infected their behavior and way of life that their personalities are inseparable from it. I don’t know how this happens. I have worked in corporations but probably not at high enough levels, and at no time did I feel it necessary to subsume my personality to the corporate mindset. Which is probably why I am a writer right now. And yet, that is what essentially happened to these people. They traded their individuality for the corporate good—which somehow, became entangled with their own good. ‘One Mind—One Purpose.’

Isn’t that what happens to those who choose to climb the corporate ladder?

I feel I have to describe some of these behaviors and characteristics. First of all, there is the dedication to materialistic acquisition. There is no other way to demonstrate one’s success in the corporate environment. One has to wear the same outfits, yes-man one’s betters to the same degree, push the same papers, live by the same reports. In fact, one’s day is filled with conformity in corporate life, and looking out-of-place, saying something out-of-line, being a loose cannon in any way, is highly discouraged—daily—hourly—moment by moment. Those who cannot stomach this constant pounding into conformity usually leave and start their own businesses. Or they become artists or craftsmen. Or they become teachers or social workers or musicians or nurses. Something with some life to it, some creativity to it. This is the antidote to corporate mind.

Which brings me to my point—how this corporate mindset has infected our politics.

Think about it. The elevation of the corporate good as the ultimate goal. The diminishment of science, social programs, the arts. These are all antithetical to corporate mindset. These things produce too much independence, too much thought—and far too much innovation and even competition—which is a threat to the corporation. The maintenance of the old school corporate world is the ultimate goal, and everything else must give way to its pre-eminence. And so we get to one of my favorite subjects—manipulation. This is at the heart of corporate mindset. The corporate world is—is it not?—a civilized society where overt hostility is not allowed. Instead, a great deal of subtle manipulation is employed, along with a certain amount of withholding of approval, a large portion of insincerity and a fair dollop of backbiting is used to get one’s way and force people to do –or not do—what you want.

Do you see the parallels to the Republican political practices?

They have manipulated the public skillfully, using all these methods, from backbiting opponents relentlessly to an appalling amount of dishonestly about their true goals. All this stems from the corporate mindset—the corporations that must be protected—at the expense of everyone else.

Of course, they will not tell you this. They will never admit it, and that too, is part of the corporate mindset of manipulating people to do what you want them to do while convincing them it is good for them. Unfortunately, when the people discover they’ve been ‘gamed’ all along, the anger grows—and grows—and eventually the anger turns to a demand for redress.

Let’s see how long the gaming of the public goes on—and what form the demand for redress will take.

Mad Men, or White Guys Gone Wild

I’ve tried—I’ve really tried—to watch Mad Men and see what the buzz was about, if only to understand why the show has won so many awards and seems to be considered such great drama--

To coin a phrase—I don’t get it.

Yes, the setting is remarkably correct for the timeframe, and yes, the characters all seem the right degree of caricature to make the viewing entertaining.

That’s about it.

The chronic sexual hunting is slightly nauseating, the historical shuffling-aside of the women is horrifying and the closeting of the gay character is depressing. The “glacial” pace—yes, that is how it is described—“glacial”--makes me watch the clock. The lack of action makes me find other chores to fill the time.

In a word, I don’t like it.

I particularly don’t like the focus on the men—white men—who are self-indulgent and believe they can, and should, get away with anything. I dislike the grasping ambition. I dislike the cultural references to oppression of minorities, and the chronic boozing looks like a celebration of dysfunction. And the status-worshipping--that has never been a field of any interest to me, so that’s lost on me, too.

In a word, there’s no there there for me.

The demographic of Mad Men viewers is said to be white, under 50, and affluent. Poor people don’t get it. A lot of women don’t get it. It’s mainly a man’s show. A white man’s show, really. And a women-attached-to-successful-man show. It’s also a show for those who wish to look back at the early 60’s with rose-colored glasses. A time when white guys were king. A time when affluence was the perfect way to divert from inequity. A time where when something was good for the some, it was assumed to be good for everyone.

Perhaps too much cultural fantasy for me.

The show must inexorably march toward a more enlightened view of both the culture and humanity, in general. By that time, the writers will have been forced to add in more diverse and interesting characters. Till then, the show is like a diorama—frozen in time. The show’s fans like it that way, but like real life, the show must change because everything changes. Until that time, I will continue watch the show off-and-on, without much engagement, with one eye, and the plot just visible on the edge of my consciousness.
Wake me when something interesting happens.

A Bad Brand - or 'What are Republicans Thinking?'

As if the misinformation that drove into a protracted war in Iraq wasn’t enough, the Republicans—and their doppleganger reflection, the Tea Partiers (Teabaggers)—have continued to misrepresent and often overtly lie about the health reform bill, the financial reform bill, and almost everything else President Obama does—or is.

It’s quite astounding to watch, for a party that once carefully groomed its image as the Family Values Party (that went to hell), the Fiscal Conservative Party (also, to hell), and the reasonable, restrained arbiters of American liberty (way, way gone to Hades). This appears to be a party thrashing around in the throes of some kind of madness, trussed up as they are by their own failure, incompetence, and inability to divert from their own ideology when it’s needed. They are a bad brand now, one that, in commercial venues, would have been thrown out and started over.

Instead, we watch the Republicans compound their public mistakes, doubling-down on the bad behavior in a childish tantrum, hoping to make all those who resist their policies give up indulgently—or perhaps, it’s that they hope to make it look so bizarre and powerful others can’t help but join in.

We’ve seen them follow patently unqualified candidates, accept the incendiary rhetoric of their talk show propagandists, and silently assent to the most politically improper language and behavior that can be imagined. But their worst sin—the thing that makes their brand toxic from here on in---is their lying to the public about facts that affect them profoundly. This is unforgiveable, un-American, and makes them unworthy of leadership in any capacity. Yet they seem to be unaware of people think of them—a sure sign of unhealthy thought processes. The worst of it is that the more moderate among them allow them to carry on anyway.

So, as we wave a fond farewell to the sane and sensible cloth-coat Republicans of the past, we get the feeling we should call in professionals to counsel current Republicans in their madness. Surely, something can be done. Some medication. Some talk sessions. Some peace and quiet on some well-landscaped estate.
Or, only if absolutely necessary, electroshock therapy.

When People Had Paychecks

Outside of the obvious dichotomy of some people having jobs and other people NOT having them, lies another issue that is changing the mindset of Americans across the country. We are no longer able to count on paychecks coming in, and even dividends from investments may be reduced or completely removed from the annual income. Add to that a generation whose has seen their dreams of retirement go up in smoke. What does that do to the American psyche?

Retailers are noticing a bump in sales for the past 4 months over the course of the current recession, but this is mainly for “necessary” items—kids needing clothes they have outgrown, or people needing to look recent at work, or people buying clothes in hopes of finding new jobs. This is not the “discretionary spending” we’ve seen in the past. It may be the our consumer economy will be re-calibrated permanently, with more money going to personal debt reduction—or saving for retirement—or for cash outlays for things we previously put on credit. It will not be for that riotous spending we have done in the past—if we were lucky enough to engage in riotous spending.

So far, this has not resulted in widespread lower pricing, and certainly gas prices are not helping matters, with more money going to energy so that less can be spent on everything else. As a result, restaurants, entertainment, and tourism may be depressed for many years to come.

So where is the American economy going? Right now, it seems at a standstill, with movement apparently going in a retrograde motion to undo past mistakes. That is going to be a difficult prospect for many Americans. No more will there be automatic reliance on that next paycheck coming in as sure as the night follows the day. It is likely jobs will continue to be shaky as long as that retrograde action continues. And it may be true that America seems a kind of Lost Decade that Japan experienced a short time ago.

Until the corrections within the American economy are completed, we will all endure a kind of consumer “suspended animation.” Pent-up demand might take on a different character. Maybe it will make consumption more thoughtful in the future.
Maybe we’ll even become less materialistic—as we so often speak of, but so seldom actually do.