The Guide to Surviving the Trumpocalypse

                         
As the United States Presidential election is getting close,i am getting scared everyday because Trumpocalypse is upon us.

This is a test.Yes!

This is only a test.

We here at the Emergency Black Broadcast System have a long history of preparing black people for national emergencies. Our first alert was issued Dec. 31, 1862, when soon-to-be-emancipated slaves huddled in churches, singing songs and anticipating freedom. Since that day, we have issued a variety of alarms with varying degrees of importance—from informing our constituents that Beyoncé dropped an unannounced album to spreading the news that sidewalk CD or cigarette selling is now a capital offense in many jurisdictions.

As the only outlet that disseminates these kinds of heads-up to people of color (and please don’t point to Twitter or Facebook; you see what those motherf–kers did to Korryn Gaines and Leslie Jones), we feel it is important to advise you of a situation forming on our radar. Our state-of-the-art technology has spotted an area of concern coming on Nov. 8, 2016.

We have termed it “the Trumpocalypse.”

As you know, most media outlets and pundits are forecasting a Hillary Clinton win on this date, but you know white people are fickle. They are prone to spontaneous acts of unpredictability, like striking down the Voting Rights Act, popping up on lawns with burning crosses or handing Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy for Best Rap Album to Macklemore. Knowing this, you should be aware that it is entirely possible that a majority of Americans will go into the voting booth and check the box for Donald J. Trump on Election Day. While it is not our position to pass judgment on political activity, it is our responsibility to make sure you are prepared if America elects its first orange commander in chief.

While many of you have hinted at leaving the country if that happens, we know you aren’t going anywhere. Aside from family funerals and that time you and your sorority sisters went to the Essence Festival, you barely leave your state. Do you have a passport? A work visa? Can you speak another language (Ebonics and pig Latin don’t count)? Man, sit down.

Don’t worry. In the eventuality of a Trump presidency, we offer you the following preparedness advice for surviving the Trumpocalypse:

Take Your Money Out of the Bank

If you can be sure of one thing, it is that Trump will bankrupt the American economy. Every business venture he touches goes belly up, and America will be no different. As soon as you withdraw your funds, make sure you convert them to euros or some other foreign currency, because once he appoints Omarosa to head the Federal Reserve, the U.S. dollar won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on.

Each denomination of bills will, however, feature various poses of the Donald on the front. In a Trumpian economy, education, hard work and actual ability won’t mean anything. Every person’s worth will be measured by how much money their parents gave them—or, in the case of women, bra size. The only other way to advance will be to create hyperbole surrounding your aptitude and hope that people blindly believe you. Or get a breast implant.

Women, Be Warned

Buy extra pants just to account for the executive order legalizing p–sy grabbing. In the new bosom-based economy, admission to college and all employment will be conducted by a series of small, Miss America-like beauty contests. To prepare for this, you should show up to all job interviews with an evening gown and a two-piece bathing suit. You’ll still be paid 77 cents for every dollar a man earns, but at least you won’t have to attend those workplace sexual harassment seminars.

Black Men, Beware

You should get ready to walk around in the nude once he fulfills his campaign promise for “law and order.” Police departments all over the country will enact versions of stop and frisk. In New York City, 83 percent of the people stopped and frisked in 2015 were black or Latino. Once the people at the Republican National Convention who cheered for the officer cleared in the death of Freddie Gray are in charge and merge stop and frisk with the “Stand your ground” law, the only surefire way to ensure that you won’t be stopped, frisked and then shot will be to walk around naked. I know what you’re thinking: “But where will I keep my money?”

Don’t worry. You won’t have any.

No one will.

Watch Your Back

Once President Trump takes office, the alt-right racists, neo-Nazis and white-hood wearers will emerge from the shadows. To be clear, Trump has not created more racists—he has just empowered them to be racist in the open. They have just been waiting for their moment. It’s like being at a highbrow party where everyone wants to dance, but they’re waiting for the right song. Trump’s dog-whistle racism is white supremacy’s “Back That Azz Up.”

There is a positive aspect, though. Black people in white neighborhoods may save money because they won’t have to burn their porch lights. They can just use the glow from the flaming crosses on their lawns.

Remain Calm

As with all emergencies, we assure you that there is no reason to panic. It is unlikely that our next leader will be the comb-over in chief, but it is our duty to prepare you for that possibility. In the eventuality that America (spelled “w-h-i-t-e-p-e-o-p-l-e”) slides into voting booths and chooses the tiny-handed totalitarian as the next president, there is still no need to fret.

When Obamacare is repealed, all the great Mexican, Muslim and black doctors will leave America. So when Ebola makes love to the Zika virus, the only people America will have left to fight the resulting disease that turns people into zombies is Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz and researchers from Trump University’s School of Figuring Out Science. So you’ll probably have died an agonizing death with blood leaking out of your eyeballs before any racist, sexist or economic calamities befall you.

Plus, Trump’s belligerence, lack of diplomacy and knowledge deficiency in foreign policy will probably start World War III anyway. By the time you need any advice, Trump will have called Kim Jong Un a “Chinaman” or tried to dry his hands on a Saudi prince’s kaffiyeh after using the bathroom, and you’ll be reading our “Emergency Guide to Surviving Nuclear Winter.”

Be strong.

Remember this is only a test.

Written by Michael Harriot

Michael Harriot is a podcaster, spoken-word poet, editor of the daily digital magazine NegusWhoRead, and one of the greatest makers of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches of our time

Donald Trump is the Anti-American -Roger Cohen

                             

Delmore Schwartz, the poet, wrote of “the beautiful American word, Sure.”

To anyone raised as I was in the crimped confines of a wearier continent, Europe, that little word is indeed a thing of beauty, expressing a sense of possibility, an embrace of tomorrow, openness to the stranger, and a readiness for adventure that no other country possesses in such degree. It is the most concise expression of the optimism inherent in the American idea.

It is also something incommunicable until lived. To the outsider, America may appear by turns vulgar or violent, crass or childish, ugly or superficial, and of course it can be all of these things. Jonathan Galassi, the poet and publisher, has written of the “American cavalcade,” Philip Roth of “the indigenous American berserk,” and there is a gaudy, raucous, cinematic tumult to American life that is without parallel. Relentless reinvention is what America does; that is not always pretty. But beneath it all reside a can-do straightforwardness and directness that are the warp and weft of the American tapestry.

“Will you come with me?”

“Sure.”

And this in the end is all that Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for the highest office in the land, has had to offer America: his shallow, manipulative, self-important, scapegoat-seeking form of rage.

Over the three debates with Hillary Clinton it became clear that this businessman who says he wants to make America great again in fact wants to make America shrink into a defensive crouch of resentment. Trump was small in the debates. He was as small as the America he seems to envisage. He was mean, nasty, petty and lazy. Smallness oozed from his petulant pout; it was all that would fit between those pursed lips. Any target was good for this showman whose ego is so consuming that he is utterly without conviction: Mexicans, Muslims, women, the disabled, war heroes, and, in the end, American democracy itself, for which he showed contempt in suggesting he might contest the outcome of an election that he contends, without the slightest shred of evidence, might be “rigged.”

The America of “Sure” is a stranger to Trump. His is the angry America of “shove it.” If that frustrated, tribal and incensed America were not lurking in a time of disorienting economic upheaval, Trump would not have garnered millions of votes. He has held up a mirror to a troubled and divided society. That, I suppose, is some form of service. But the deeper, decent, direct, can-do America is stronger; and for that America the Trump now visible in all his aspects is simply unfit for high office. He would threaten to undo what America is.

Of all the sentences written about Trump over many, many months now, my favorite is the last one in the letter sent this month by The New York Times lawyer David McCraw to Trump’s lawyer. Trump had demanded the retraction of an article about two women who had come forward to describe the way he had groped them. The women’s accounts, McCraw argued, constituted newsworthy information of public concern, and he concluded: “If Mr. Trump disagrees, if he believes that American citizens had no right to hear what these women had to say and that the law of this country forces us and those who would dare to criticize him to stand silent or be punished, we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.”

Sure, we’ll see you in court.

Sure, America is a country that, despite its “original sin” of racism, elected a black man.

Sure, America will elect a woman as president.

 

Sure, this land was made for you and me.

No questions asked. Sure I will. The word is at once strong and soft, reassuring above all. The American experiment unravels without this.

The spirit of “Sure” stands in contrast to the culture of impossibility and the fear of failure that often undercut European enterprise. Bitter experience of repetitive cataclysm has taught Europe to be wary of risk. Perhaps the French brick wall contained in the phrase “pas possible,” a frequent response to my inquiries during the years I lived in Paris, best expresses this mind-set. Call it the spirit of “Non.” No wonder Europe does social protection better than innovation.

Now if this America, whose essence is openness, whose first question is not “Where do you come from?” but “What can you do for me?” becomes consumed by rage, then it is lost. Rage is a closing of the mind. Anger against the foreigner, against the outsider and against the other may offer some passing consolation in times of difficulty or dread but they lead America away from itself. They offer the spirit of suspicion in place of the spirit of “Sure.” They undercut American decency. They replace the draw of the next frontier and of the unknown with the dead end of walls. Rage is also a form of dishonesty because it precludes the reflection that leads to truth.

And this in the end is all that Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for the highest office in the land, has had to offer America: his shallow, manipulative, self-important, scapegoat-seeking form of rage.

Over the three debates with Hillary Clinton it became clear that this businessman who says he wants to make America great again in fact wants to make America shrink into a defensive crouch of resentment. Trump was small in the debates. He was as small as the America he seems to envisage. He was mean, nasty, petty and lazy. Smallness oozed from his petulant pout; it was all that would fit between those pursed lips. Any target was good for this showman whose ego is so consuming that he is utterly without conviction: Mexicans, Muslims, women, the disabled, war heroes, and, in the end, American democracy itself, for which he showed contempt in suggesting he might contest the outcome of an election that he contends, without the slightest shred of evidence, might be “rigged.”

The America of “Sure” is a stranger to Trump. His is the angry America of “shove it.” If that frustrated, tribal and incensed America were not lurking in a time of disorienting economic upheaval, Trump would not have garnered millions of votes. He has held up a mirror to a troubled and divided society. That, I suppose, is some form of service. But the deeper, decent, direct, can-do America is stronger; and for that America the Trump now visible in all his aspects is simply unfit for high office. He would threaten to undo what America is.

Of all the sentences written about Trump over many, many months now, my favorite is the last one in the letter sent this month by The New York Times lawyer David McCraw to Trump’s lawyer. Trump had demanded the retraction of an article about two women who had come forward to describe the way he had groped them. The women’s accounts, McCraw argued, constituted newsworthy information of public concern, and he concluded: “If Mr. Trump disagrees, if he believes that American citizens had no right to hear what these women had to say and that the law of this country forces us and those who would dare to criticize him to stand silent or be punished, we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.”

Sure, we’ll see you in court.

Sure, America is a country that, despite its “original sin” of racism, elected a black man.

Sure, America will elect a woman as president.

Sure, this land was made for you and me.

Writer
Roger Cohen joined The New York Times in 1990. He was a foreign correspondent for more than a decade before becoming acting foreign editor on Sept. 11, 2001, and foreign editor six months later.
Since 2004, he has written a column for The International New York Times, formerly known as The International Herald Tribune. In 2009 he was named a columnist of The New York Times. His columns appear every Tuesday and Friday.