I sometimes exist in a state of persistent obliviousness.  I keep up with world news through the filter of other people. Hearing about things I have no control over and can do nothing to solve keeps me up at night, so to protect me, I stay away from the news. That being said, one thing that has filtered through is most things Trump.

Anthropomorphic personification – I am not sure if this term is original to Terry Pratchett, but it is in his books that I came across the concept.  The way I interpret it is that it is the humanizing of an abstract concept, like the Grim Reaper representing Death.  Another idea that came to me through Terry Pratchett was that belief in something brings it into existence and lack of belief diminishes it (Small Gods- awesome book).

So, I pondered the idea of Donald Trump being an anthropomorphic personification of an asshole.  Thinking to myself there appears to be nothing else to him.  Bully, narcissist, arrogant, petty, belligerent, ignorant…if the shoe fits.  Then I contemplated the idea that belief has brought him into being. Belief that there needs to be darkness to let us see what is good; a threat to rally us from complacency; the ideas of the past being juxtaposed against the direction of the future to show us how far we have come, but also how fragile it can be.  I am stunned by how broad sweeping his fear and hate is of everything that is not him.  I picture him as an ouroboros, with his head firmly up his ass instead of biting his tail.  Maybe if, as a collective, people stop believing in him, and believed in themselves and the processes put in place to protect, stopped talking to and about him in the ways that make him seem big and important, did things within their power to supersede, undermine, and repudiate him…

As always there are no simple solutions but it is lovely to picture him as a rapidly deflating balloon (or a miserable one-eyed turtle about to be eaten by an eagle) as the power created through belief and fear is abolished.