"PMURT | TRUMP - or the blizzard of the world" [NL] - 2016
"PMURT | TRUMP" was written in the summer of 2016 at the Hill House Residency Program at the Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology in East Jordan, Michigan. I drove from New York in my car on state roads, not interstate highways, at a casual pace through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan -- stopping in regional cities and smaller towns along the way.
I did something original for contemporary theatre artists in the USA -- I spoke to regular, working people.
I hardly saw any Hillary Clinton signs in Pennsylvania, Ohio, or Michigan. It was not that I saw an overwhelming number of Donald Trump signs; but rather it was the absence of Clinton signs which tipped me off. This stood in stark contrast to what was being reported on the news, or in "elite" arts circles on social media via my friends and colleagues in New York and California; all of whom were convinced that Hillary Clinton would win that November in a landslide. On the contrary -- from where I stood in a motel parking lot in Toledo, Ohio or talking to convenience store workers at a gas station in Central Michigan -- I realized that candidate Donald Trump was going to win the 2016 Presidential Election -- easily. This essay was my attempt to explain how and why.
It remains one of the most urgent and important works I have ever written. It brings me no pleasure to now have confirmation that it also remains my most prescient.
The essay remains completely ignored by arts elites in New York and the European Union. Most likely because arts elites do not even bother to physically read anymore; they merely scan and skim and "heart-like" posts & stories in their feeds from "pre-approved" friends and colleagues who already think just like they do. Even as Trump has now won a second term as the U.S. President -- due to the same, identical root causes and symptoms first discussed in my essay -- and even while Trump's techniques and tactics which led to his rise are replicated and repeated (with little variation) across most Western democracies; with dire (and still unaddressed) consequences for all of us.
"PMURT | TRUMP" was published on diggit magazine in The Netherlands during October 2016 -- after the essay was rejected by nearly every major American news and arts publication during August-September 2016. I am forever grateful to the editors at diggit magazine for publishing my work. And thank you to editor, Ico Maly.
https://www.diggitmagazine.com/working-papers/pmurt-trump
