The Grim Reaper by Alfred N.Muggins

2/3/25 / 8/3/25

    Alfred went to bed too late every night. In these troubling times there was to be no rest for those who cared about the causes of democracy and economic fairness. He was all too conscious that there was a battle going on for America’s soul. Newly elected President Trumpenstein was doing his level best to tear apart the nation which had succoured him. He had somehow managed to con millions of gullible American voters into voting for his many promises or suggestions. Many had taken it for granted that he would carry out many of these conservative or Republican promises, and all his loyal Trumplings waited with bated breath while he began to enact their will at breakneck speed through executive orders and personnel changes.

    As a caring internationalist Alfred received the wisdoms and reactions from Facebook friends and news media outlets, reels and You Tube posts from commentators. Like most of them he became far more alarmed as it became evident that this time Trumpenstein really did mean BUSINESS! Yes, Business was more important than humans! Yes he was going to bring the tricks of his various trades to bear upon the high office of Presidential governance. This would mean, it seemed, that he would treat the government of America as a business, and not as a mere Government. Inevitably, Alfred felt, this would be likely to mean that mere humans’ needs would be likely to figure last in the deliberations of the new mighty leader and his power hungry sidekicks.

    Instead of writing his own great works, this all meant that Alfred’s free time was taken up with checking out the numerous Facebook memes, particularly those on the subject of the new President and his sidekicks, and the Great Job they were supposedly doing in Making America Great Again. Of course most of the memes Alfred came across were more in opposition than in support of Trumplicon, as he had many cool and varied friends upon Facebook, quite a few transatlantic, and many closer to home among the musical, political and cultural circles of Britain. He was in fact still doing his own writing, but as with all the other recent events and major movements of recent years, the handover of power to the arch Trumplicon increasingly subverted and dominated his dreams, both waking and in sleep, as the magnitude of this unwanted new revolution took over the news, with story after story of horrors and hardship, pantomimical twists and turns, until he like many others realized they were all in a new rewriting of next year’s great dystopian novel! The only trouble was that this one was currently writing itself, led by Trumplicon and his rich mates, particularly the new boy on the World’s Stage Mr Elon Mars Musk, the richest man in America (?), and no one actually had a certain clue about where or when it would actually end. If only Alfred could have written it himself as a fiction, so he could control the narrative, but unfortunately it was writing itself, led by these big boys, appropriately christened as the Oligarchs. At the moment they were ahead of everyone, particularly the Trumplings, many of whom still had not realized what was really going on, and particularly the Republican Congressmen and women and Senators, who should have been the ones to restrain their beloved leader, but seemed to be asleep at the wheel, unaware of the real agendas which were materializing, asleep in their cocoons of Conservative politics and blind loyalty to their ‘Great’ leader.

    In all probability these ‘politicians’, who voted repeatedly for Trumpenstein’s policies when asked, sometimes did so against their consciences, but were terrified of losing their jobs in the next elections if the Party leaders and particularly Trumpenstein himself disapproved of their voting record. They would be deselected by the Republican Party, and deprived of the campaign funds which all politicians needed in this Land of the Dollar, where nothing happened without backers. Instead of representing their own views or the views of their voters they must, in this new Party order, adhere strictly to instructions from above and behind if they wished to keep their places in the feeding trough.