"The simulacra is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true." -- Ecclesiastes, quoted & adapted by Jean Baudrillard
Donald's tax returns reveal that he is The Kardashian President: a soulless ghost who is famous for being famous. The only time Donald did not lose hundreds of millions of dollars was when he was getting paid to pretend to be rich – on The Apprentice, through related merchandising and through endorsement deals. It is the greatest magic trick in American history. You play a character who is supposed to be the real you, but is not, and you are paid unspeakable sums of money for your representation of this person who does not exist. As usual, Jorge Luis Borges foresaw a precursor to such a turn of events. He wrote about a map that becomes so detailed and developed that it finally overtakes the actual territory, replacing it with its copy. What Jean Baudrillard points out in his essay that references the Borges fable is that the simulacra of late stage capitalism do not even have an original that they are portraying -- just as there is no real brilliant, rich businessman for Donald to portray. As we see, there is no actual "Donald Trump," there is only the simulacrum Donald. And reality bends to accommodate the simulacrum Donald.
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Nor has the kill-or-be-killed instinct learned from Frederick Christ Trump, Sr., allowed an actual self to develop. A brand, sure. A parody of a drunken Catskills comedian, sure. An abuser, a victimizer, even a pretend victim speaking for a nation of pretend victims, sure. That sort of entity is unafraid of death because it cannot remember having known life. That, as Steven Knight and Cillian Murphy have shown us so beautifully and painfully of late, makes him deadly to everyone and everything he touches.
Dang. Thanks for that, EB. Some thing other than a self has developed out of the Fred Trump ethos. And as you say, it is "deadly to everyone and everything he touches."
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