The "Freddy Kreuger" Solution to Trump
Quit Paying Attention to Him; Instead, Ignore Him, It's What He Hates the Most
I have to admit, I like original horror films. Not the reboots and retreads and sequels so much, but when a new scary idea comes along, wow, I can’t take my eyes off it and my mind gets stuck on it, not able to get past it.
Growing up, one of the scariest I saw (when I was only 12! The beauty of having an older sister who could rent rated R movies and leave them out the next day) was the original “Nightmare on Elm Street,” the original with Heather Langenkemp and Robert Englund as Freddy. If there was one thing Wes Craven knew how to do, it was craft a truly scary film complete with mesmerizing, gory imagery. It was designed around the concept of a nightmare itself, attacking you when you are at your most vulnerable, when you went to sleep; and sooner or later, you just had to.
Freddy Krueger, the villain of all the Nightmare on Elm Street films, didn’t speak that much in the first one, which is what made him all the more scarier. Everyone else talked about him though. The teenagers all had the same nightmares and they all grimaced when another described him. All you really knew of him, you learn secondhand, largely from our heroine’s (Nancy’s) mother, who provides the backstory. But we see Freddy throughout, that and the bloody aftermath he leaves behind. Nancy’s best friend doing a bloody “dance” on the ceiling, and her boyfriend (a young Johnny Depp in his first role) swallowed by his Sealy Posturepedic and regurgitated against the ceiling of his room.1
So how do you get rid of a nightmare, especially one like Freddy Krueger? What Nancy learns is that to escape a nightmare, you have to stop being frightened by it. Show your courage. If it doesn’t bother you anymore, it isn’t scary, nor threatening. Take back all that effort and energy and fear that you put into it, and just put it in the back of our mind and ignore it. Like any nightmare. After that, you can sleep well again at night, unfraid, and focus on other things.
Why Am I Talking About Freddy Krueger?
I bring this up because going into this election year, I hear the same old shit about Donald Trump and how fearful another four years of him are. How the media can’t stop covering him, whether it’s a rally, a trial, another indictment or just pictures of him at Mar-a-Lago. The NYT keeps interviewing Trump supporters trying to “understand” them (really, what’s to understand?) To be sure, the media’s better at pointing out his lies, at portraying him as a gaslighter, a fraud and a villain. Yet they continue to feed this beast by keeping him around. They report on him. ALL. THE. TIME. He barely campaigned in Iowa and the story was “Trump doesn’t campaign in Iowa!” J.F.C.
They shouldn’t. He’s old news. He’s like MTV covering Dexy’s Midnight Runners in 1991.2 He’s passe, old hat, boring. He’s what your grandma listens to at the old folks home. If he had an accordian, he’d be the dancing monkey begging for tips. The news covered the Different Strokes kids after the show ended, committing crimes, going to jail, down on their luck, and it seemed tragic; with Trump the press makes it seem like his pecadillos are still headline news even though the Trump show was cancelled four years ago. He’s Derek Zoolander still trying to be relevant in a sequel but still can’t turn left.3
Sure, he’s just won the Iowa Caucus and seems destined to cruise to the Republican Nomination. But seriously, no one in the GOP nowadays is what I would consider a trendsetter, and everything on FOX News and within the GOP silos seems more akin to a time machine from 25 years ago than pertinent in this day and age. I mean, one of their biggest pundits was a pillow salesman for crying out loud. That doesn’t exactly scream “online influencer.” The GOP is old and dying off, and are pushing buggy whips and big band in an era of fast cars and EDM. In that vein, Trump is their perfect candidate; a horse that is long in the tooth and should be sold to a glue factory. Meanwhile, every geriatric octogenarian is yelling “giddy-up” at a clop pace.
I get the urge to roll down the window and yell “Get the F**k off the road,” but it’s just easier to pass them by and move on. What do we do with has-beens and culturally irrelevant wannabes? We ignore them.
Why the “Boggart Solution” Doesn’t Work
You would be forgiven if you thought an even better solution is the “Boggart” solution from “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” For those unfamiliar with the Harry Potter film and of Boggarts, a “boggart” is a shapeshifting spectre who turns itself into whatever the person nearest it fears the most. To stop a boggart, one need only to wave a wand and say “ridiculous” turning it into something funny and laughable; no more fear to feed the beast.
Trump was kicked off Twitter for years, relegated to venting on his network, “Truth Social”; that didn’t stop him, because people screenshot his posts there onto Twitter and other networks and were like “Look at this! What a buffoon! He’s losing it again.” But by doing that you give power to him by still acknowledging Trump’s still there. The monster under the bed, the creep hiding in the closet, the media attention he craves, the energy he needs and eyeballs that fuels his mojo. It’s what his fans want too, to hear liberals whine and cry about the big, fearful monster that has them so up in a tizzy. Like the 3rd grade bullies they are, they love to mock those who seem fearful; and they get empowered by the attention.
And the media covering his crowds don’t do any favors either. Sure there is a fascination with the stupidity and ignorance on display at any Trump rally, but all that was around long before Trump showed up, and we rightfully relegated it to the trailer park or crazy town revivals where they belonged. When Trump came along it went maintstream and for some reason we can’t avert our eyes as if it were a freak show or circus curiosity.
But you know what the biggest surprises occur? When people think something is bigger than it is because everything around them seem so small and then they get exposed. Everyone right now is like “Trump is going to cruise in Iowa and the primary season is going to be a quick coronation!” Well, that may be true, but getting a larger piece of a smaller and ever shrinking pie means nothing. They look at polls showing Trump beating Biden and crow “Its a race!” when in actuality, it just shows Democratic voters not in step with Biden yet, but they’ll come home just like they always do.4 When it becomes a binary choice, Biden will crush Trump.
I assure you, Donald Trump is not going to be President again. He’s a cartoon character people like to watch. He’s Elmer Fudd. At some point, this same old schtick gets redundant, old, and tired, and you grow up moving on to watch more important things. You can only watch so many times before you know sooner or later the Coyote is going to fall off the cliff or Bugs is going to get the better of Elmer or Daffy.
So America, it’s time to grow up. Stop watching this senseless fare and turn the channel. Ignore Trump. Just like Nancy did in Elm Street. It’s what we should have done a long time ago. Let’s end this national nightmare and just move forward to something better already.
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
Chuck Jones, the longtime Director of Looney Tunes, had a series of “Rules” regarding the Road Runner/Coyote shorts. Here they are; pay particular attention to the one about the Coyote being a fanatic.
PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject
The comparison between Trump and Elmer Fudd is entirely apt. Consider this clip…
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Footnotes and Fun Stuff
One of the best lines ever from a horror film is when the coroner comes to Depp’s house and a cop goes, “You don’t need a body bag, you need a mop.”
You may think this isn’t right, but “Come On Eileen” came out in 1983, and 1991 the dawn of grunge and Nirvana, was 8 years later. Here we are 8 years from when Trump took that escalator ride and it rings about the same.
Like the Dexy’s Midnight Runners crack, Zoolander 2 came out 8 years ago also.
Remember the Hillary PUMAs (Party Unity My Ass) who avowed they would never vote for Obama in 2008? Yeah, that didn’t happen either. And in this case the alternative to Biden is a Handmaid’s Tale enabling, abortion ending, authoritarian who wants to end everything uber-liberals support; you going to tell me they will just ALLOW it? I don’t think so.