Another Dive into Tricking the Trickster: See-sawing Status with the (Tasmanian) Devil

Trying to make sense of Trump’s hold on America and the havoc he and Elon Musk wreak, I struggle to find “an adequate metaphor” the great jazz commentator Albert Murray thought we should seek for “contemporary actuality.” How can I delineate Trump and Musk’s power and suggest perhaps how to contain them?

Dark Trickster Dionysus? How can we help his base emerge from the hallucinations his heady wine and demand for loyalty instill?

John Mulaney’s horse in a hospital? You thought a bull in a china shop was bad, imagine a horse in a hospital who, on his second visit, has learned how to use the elevator.

A Clown Car of Cabinet Candidates?

The lawlessness of vigilantes?

My latest adequate metaphor is the Looney Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil.

Remember him?

A ferocious, though dim-witted, carnivore with a notoriously short temper and little patience, his whirling feet anticipate Trump’s chaos and Musk’s chainsaw. The marsupial’s jaws can open to 80 degrees and chomp down with enough brute force to crush bone — or democracy. Taz is a one-man kleptocracy without a base.

Read the rest of “Another Dive into Tricking the Trickster” over at Randy’s Substack.