Mary Shelly, in her book, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus tells the story of a young science student Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque but sentient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. At university, Victor excels at chemistry and other sciences, soon developing a secret technique to impart life to non-living matter, which eventually leads to his creation of the Wretch. The Wretch later burned their cottage in a fit of rage, and murdered Victor’s brother William. Seeking revenge, Victor pursues the Wretch to the North Pole, but cannot kill his creation. Repulsed by his work, Victor flees and dismisses him.
Donald Trump is an American (GOP) 2016 presidential candidate. Like The Modern Prometheus, he is a perfect creation of the Republican Party. But like the Wretch in Shelly’s novel Trump has gone bonkers and is threatening to bring down the roof on everyone including the party that nurtured him if he fails to have his way. And the top guys in the Republican Party are frantically working their ass off to overturn Trump’s nomination, and maybe, wake up from their self-induced nightmare.
Realising that Trump has seized a formidable advantage in the race, they started towards the end of March with an aggressive battle in Wisconsin’s April 5 primary, with a delegate-by-delegate lobbying effort that would portray Trump as a disastrous choice for the general elections.
But like Shelly’s Wretch, enlarged and amplified to about 8 feet tall, Trump has grown monstrously big and can dismiss and harass anybody including his party bigwigs at will. His adopted and brainwashed loyalists have grown naively and preposterously large within the shortest period. Hear him: “I’m representing a tremendous – many, many millions of people, in many cases first-time voters. If you disenfranchise those people … I think you would have problems like you’ve never seen before, Trump, told CNN.
On the whole, Trump can perfectly be described as a composite of a whole body parts transplanted together from the Republican cadaver, reanimated and repackaged as a presidential hopeful. The names they call him now does not make any difference even if he did not make it to the White House.
This is just one out of several threats and claptrap made by Trump at his rabble-rousing rallies.
Can anyone accuse Trump of being so caustically creative and contemptuous as to have uttered a boatload of rubbish in the last couple of months? No. Before his arrival on the scene and becoming the most vociferous mouthpiece of the Republican Party, there were bigots, racists, anti-immigrant forces and incurable sexists masquerading as pundits and intellectuals within the party. To these lot, Barack Obama became the fall guy for everything that has gone wrong with America. In fact, as far as they are concerned, brand Obama epitomises everything un-American and even anti-American.
So Trump, the presidential hopeful who baffles and nauseates the world, appeared, fully armed with a trash can of all the garbage the Republican Pundits have been spilling in the last seven and a half years of Obama administration. No corner of the world has been spared Trump’s vitriol since his debut on the American political scene. Widely likened to Adolph Hitler, Trump has German ancestry. Some allege that his German ancestors came from Bavaria. But that is by the way.
Compare Trump with any demagogue in history, the fact remains he is a product of the Republican Party. It doesn’t matter the name anybody calls it.
Part of Frankenstein’s rejection of his creation is the fact that he does not give it a name, which causes a lack of identity. Instead it is referred to by words such as “wretch”, “monster”, “creature”, “demon”, “devil”, “fiend”, and “it”. In some dire instance, it referred to it as “vile insect”.
The world will not forget the Trump brand in a hurry. For months, a brazenly racist businessman-turned-politician bestrode the American political space and hijacked every aspect of its national and international conversation.
In the business sector, brand Trump has not spared America. In his latest book, Crippled America, Trump writes: “I’m a businessman with a brand,”. And the world only knows Trump by attaching his name to buildings, a university, golf courses and reality shows: the core identity of Trump’s personality is Trump and only Trump. Compare this to the other American business leaders of the past: John Rockefeller’s name is synonymous with oil, Andrew Carnegie’s with steel, Henry Ford’s with cars, Steve Jobs’s with computers. But Trump? Just Trump. Call it Trashy Trump or Toxic Trump – the name can hardly call up any image with value in the mind.
The Modern Prometheus, another name for Shelly’s novel, in later versions of Greek mythology, was the Titan who created mankind at the behest of Zeus. Prometheus taught man to hunt, read, and heal their sick and later took back the fire from Zeus and gave to man. Although he was eternally chained for crossing the line, eventually Hercules released him.
So who is going to unchain the GOP from the shackles of Trump?
The Republican Party is desperately searching for a nominee that will salvage its image at the 2016 polls. An image mindlessly battered by Trump. The GOP is the party of big business, so Trump remains the most appropriate banner to carry on the image and give it the raucous and most evident symbol of American capitalism. Whoever appears as the Republican deus ex machina at the 2016 polls, Trump’s damage is almost irreparable.
Featured image source: abcnews.go.com
