Being drawn into the dream of a madman. Trump’s dream. It seems like fiction, doesn’t it? But, as they say, reality is stranger than. I didn’t come up with this observation of being drawn into a madman’s dream myself. It comes from Harlan Ellison via Stephen King. When asked why he writes what is commonly called horror, Ellison pointed to the things happening at the time: Jonestown, Ayatollah Khomeini, etc., and replied something like the world was being drawn into Khomeini’s dream. So the United States is being drawn in to the mad dream of Donald Trump. I believe it’s because many people lack imagination. There’s a reason I write “horror” stories in my spare time. I prefer not to live in a madman’s dream. Even if my stories are read by the few who frequent the journals in which they’re published, they are an attempt at viewing the world through unclouded eyes.
Entirely too much of our collective lives have been eaten up by Trump’s antics. I was looking for an image on this blog going back some eight years and found, you guessed it, posts about Trump. And here we are on the precipice again, all to stoke one man’s vanity. And people ask why some of us write or watch horror? We tend to treat insanity as if it’s rare. Any self-aware, reflective person, when alone and honest, will admit that some things we do simply aren’t rational. We’re not, as Silicon Valley moguls like to think of themselves, Mr. Spock. (And even he underwent pon farr.) The evidence of Trump’s manipulations is all over the place, but that doesn’t stop yard signs from popping up like toadstools.
We are far from a “sane” species. We may wonder why deer step out onto the road and stare blankly into headlights, but we do the exact same thing. Horror writers tend to be pretty clear thinkers. I suspect it’s because many of them spend time trying to get into the heads of their irrational characters. They can recognize the madmen and the dangerous among us. King’s Twitter posts make no bones about his seeing through Trump. The latter’s public speeches clearly indicate that his mental capacity isn’t sufficient to be given nuclear codes, let alone the reins of the most powerful country on the planet. He dreams of his own greatness. His desires are entirely for his own glorification. Anyone can see that. But we are creatures who dream. And it’s difficult to wake up from a dream, even if it’s a nightmare.