With all due respect to the outcome of the 2016 presidential
campaign, to those who voted for Donald Trump, and to the policies and
performance of the Trump administration, we members of the Screen Actors Guild,
the Writers Guild of America, and of numerous other unions pertaining to
American arts and letters implore Donald Trump to stop pretending he can be
president, so we can skip to the part where artists get to lament or ridicule everything
he’s done in office.
The artistic importance of the Trump White House’s
shenanigans dwarfs the political or economic effects of that administration’s actions.
The Trump administration isn’t competent enough to put its stamp on history by
the strength of its convictions or by the novelty or relevance of its policies.
The Trump family intended to get into politics only to enrich themselves or to
show off. But as far as the rest of the world should be concerned, their regime
will have only entertainment value and so Hollywood, for example, must be
allowed to capitalize on that fact.
Decades from now, no one will associate the Trump
administration with any political accomplishment, despite the need for an
overhaul of the neoliberal way of doing business at home and abroad, as is
plain from the rise of state-controlled capitalist countries such as China,
Russia, and Iran, and from the decline of liberal democracy in Europe and North
America.
Only the artistic commentaries on the Trump fiasco will
matter, and these will consist of mountains of films, novels, poems, television
series, plays, songs, and operas that will duly arrive at the meaning of Trumpism
for the benefit of humanity.
These artistic monuments to Trump’s folly are waiting to
burst forth, but the artists are prevented from starting their labours in
earnest by the fact that this administration is still perpetrating its absurd
pretense that it has some business to accomplish. Decorum requires that artists
hold their fire until Donald Trump is no longer president or until the full farce
of his time in office has unspooled.
To begin the cinematic excoriations midstream, for example,
would invite Trump’s defenders to retort, “Too soon.” But we believe the
majority of Americans have waited long enough. Donald Trump has no legitimate
business to tend to as president. His time in high office has been laughable
from beginning to end. We demand that President Trump bow out of his political
fraud so that the entertainment industry can turn its full attention his way.
The dozens of movies alone that will soon enough be made
about the Trump disaster will be worth more to history than everything Trump
will have done while he was president. Indeed, Trump’s abominable presidency
will have the sole merit of providing so many raw materials for artistic and
comedic sublimation.
In effect, President Trump is working consistently only for
one special interest besides that of his personal family’s enrichment, and
that’s the entertainment sector. Trump’s every utterance and buffoonish performance
feed artists a wealth of absurdity to challenge their respective muses. Far
from working to improve America as a whole, President Trump has effectively
aligned himself with the liberal entertainment industry, since it will be left
to the artists to redeem the shit sandwich of his presidency.
But by remaining in office where he obviously doesn’t
belong, he’s delaying that superior work that needs to be done.
Thus, we the undersigned say: Enough with the fake politics;
let’s skip to the art.
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