Mandy Nolan’s Soap Box: Trump’s toga-town

Like him or loathe him, Donald Trump is King of the Western World. The big orange hamster has found himself on his very own wheel of good fortune, and as Emperor of All he’s fast-tracking the rest of the world to what feels an awful lot like ‘the end of days’.

I’ve never been one for conspiracy theories or a convert of the works of Nostradamus, but wow, shit is getting wacky. I keep wondering if someone spiked my Kool-Aid.

Anyone with an anxiety condition is going to be doubling their meds right about now. Or restocking the bunker. Or building a bunker. Out of turmeric. Will there be a third world war? Or will it be a slow cook via global warming? Or perhaps it’s something quick, like violent death from a nuclear explosion? Or in its wake, a Zombie Apocalypse? Perhaps we’ll all die of despair. Is it possible for humanity to crumble from disbelief alone?

The constant outrage has made most of us numb to the continual stream of lunacy that leaks in from the US. It’s their very own Fukushima, except America’s disaster wasn’t caused by a tsunami; it was caused by an election. An election with shock waves still reverberating around the world. When it comes to damage incurred and risk to the planet, Donald seems to have the same half-life as uranium. (I sometimes imagine how good it would be to have him encased in concrete. That’s a great way to deal with unstable ‘reactors’.)

Or perhaps this is all a joke. Any minute we’re going to find out that the American election was actually a prank, an elaborate mockumentary, and that Donald Trump is actually Ali G or Steve Carrell or Ricky Gervais or even Chris Lilley in their finest comedic depiction of a crazed dictator. I’m imagining a scene at the White House and it’s like a frathouse party and everyone’s wearing togas. It’s toga madness. Semi-naked porn stars with their big naked boobies bobbing in the pool. Old men in sheets touching themselves while talking to young men in sheets touching other men in togas. Other old men in sheets trying to molest the bouncing pool boobies.

We’d cut to the Oval Office for some wide shots of general orgiastic toga frolicking. Close up on debauchery. Classic fall of empire stuff. Except at this toga party the host doesn’t drink, because he admits with a laugh, it turns him into a bit of a ‘cunt’! He says this to camera as he pushes someone into a woodchipper. I’ve seen this film before. It was disturbing the first time round. It’s Caligula.

I can see Trumpy in his toga, with his laurel-leaf wreath pulled tightly over his ginger nut, his fluffy orange tufts poking out, making him look childlike and vulnerable in that way only old men can. His goat-like feet splayed in sandals. He would have gross hairy toes. Marmalade hair curling around the big toe. His power toe. His tubby tummy rounding in his toga.

Perhaps it’s not a movie. Perhaps it’s history folding in on itself. What if Trump actually is our Caligula? If like Rome we’ve reached that bit when a glorious civilisation cannibalises itself. I can see the parallels. Trump sacks his FBI director and gives the job to his horse. And of course then there’s the creepy Caligula-esque things he’s said about his daughter Ivanka. (Remembering of course the Roman emperor had a similar penchant for one of his close relatives, his beloved sister…) Trumpy said Ivanka was hot, that if she weren’t his daughter he’d be dating her… It’s fine to quietly think your daughter is pretty but contemplating a scenario where you might be dating sets off the alarm bells. And hopefully a visit from Child Protection.

But it’s a toga party. Anything goes. The party is really hotting up now. The togas are coming off. Trump’s not Caligula now, he’s Nero. Rome is burning. Trump’s pulled out of the Paris Agreement – he may as well have struck a match and burned us to the ground. It’s potentially catastrophic. The US is one of the world’s biggest emitters of carbon. If they pull out we won’t meet our targets. And it’s not just Rome that will burn; he’ll take out the entire planet. That’s pretty much a hostage situation.

And Trump is planning on doing nothing about it. I guess, like Nero, he’ll fiddle while we burn. So maybe it is a practical joke. America – by Monty Python? Except sadly, no-one’s laughing. America has played their Trump card. And the rest of the world is gonna fold.