Gore in the White House
How America went Psycho for Trump
I recently decided to read American Psycho. It’s a book I’ve had on my list for a while — one of those “people-say-you-ought-to-read-it-but-you-never-got-around-to-it-but-now-that-we’re-in-a-pandemic-and-the-world-is-going-crazy-and-you-need-an-escape-from-Donald-fucking-Trump-so-you-pick-it-up” books. The first thing I learned? The same lesson our country is learning right now. Escaping Donald fucking Trump is easier said than done.
If you’re looking to escape thinking about the President, I don’t recommend reading American Psycho. His name is everywhere. I started counting all the times his name was mentioned and I actually had to “stop the count”.
Donald Trump’s name appears more often in American Psycho than it did on ballots in Detroit. The anti-hero of the novel, the suave, ultra-rich, mass-murderer Patrick Bateman, is obsessed with Trump. He’s a fan-boy. In fact, his whole personality seems to be based on aping Trump, even when this goes against his own taste. A pizza he hates becomes New York’s finest once he hears it’s got the Donald stamp of approval. He hates live music, but makes an exception for Donald’s favourite band (U2, lol!). For someone who claims to have deep principles, Bateman is quick to shift his thinking to align with the orange blobster. He’s basically a metaphor for the whole the Republican party.
And, just as it did for the GOP, it seems to work out well for him. In Bateman’s world, success is defined by slicked back hair, being surrounded by models, expensive suits, talking about work but never actually doing any work, flaunting wealth, being casually racist and homophobic, and having a licence to do whatever you want, whenever you want, to whomever you want, with zero consequences — and there’s no-one better at it than our soon-to-be-ex-President.
Far from an escape from our current world, to read American Psycho was to enter a weirdly familiar world, one filled with vast tranches of monotony punctuated by spikes of nightmarish horror. What could be more 2020? Day after day, Patrick Bateman recounts his daily regimen: watching the same TV shows, having the same vapid conversations with the same yuppie associates, eating at the same restaurants, visiting the same nightclubs. Night after night, he rapes, maims, and slaughters. The book is known for its scenes of graphic sex and violence, and they are indeed grotesque and horrifying. But by the end, they begin to become repetitive and even tedious. Did I really need another graphic description of torture? Likewise, did I need another 5-star meal, another painstakingly described outfit? Patrick Bateman might think he is the most interesting man in the world, but in fact, he’s perfectly boring. This, too, is how the President operates. A daily glance at the headlines or his twitter feed is enough to throw up, and yet it’s so repetitive, we become numb. The more he yells, the harder it is to listen. But the moment we turn our back, people suffer.
Since the election, there have been more than 12,000 new fatalities in the US due to COVID-19. The number is growing at over 1,000 per day. But we long ago seem to have just accepted it. When the United States reached 100,000 deaths, the entire New York Times was dedicated to memorialising the victims with a list of names covering the front page. When the number reached 200,000, it barely got a mention. It was the same with the President’s sexual assaults. Access Hollywood was big news. But it led nowhere: in the height of #metoo, which toppled so many powerful men, Trump has somehow remained immune, become more powerful even, like a Skeksis Lord sucking on the essence of the Dark Crystal. The President has more than 20 allegations of sexual assault against him, and each one makes a little less of an impact, because we have collectively given up on there ever being any consequences.
The saddest part about these last 4 years is, just as in American Psycho, it was never really a secret what the killer was planning. It’s always been right there, out in the open. Bateman is no evil mastermind — he’s practically begging to be discovered, constantly slipping in references to his nocturnal murders in casual conversation, telling his friends he works in “murders and executions”, and eventually admitting all his murders on the phone to his lawyer — who thinks it’s a joke, because “Bateman is too much of a dork to do it”.
Trump is a dork and a joke too. He’s an easy target, with his tiny hands, bright orange skin, and silly hair. He looks like a mummified bullfrog in a wig. But he’s not a schemer. All of this was so predictable — he told us about the wall and Muslim ban, and he warned us he wouldn’t concede the election. He’s like the slow steamroller crushing Kevin Kline in a Fish called Wanda. And we’re Kevin Kline. That famous statement about murdering someone on 5th Avenue? It was framed as a joke, but I don’t think it really was one. A public killing might even make him more popular with his base. That’s certainly been the current trend: Trump may be repulsive to you and me, but last week, he received more votes than he did 4 years ago. Dorks and losers can still be killers — as long as they’re popular.
It’s all so Patrick Bateman. A bored businessman, born into too much wealth, trying to feel something because he’s “bored”. Trump grabs pussies out of boredom. Patrick Bateman dissects them and keeps them in his gym locker. ICE has been giving women hysterectomies without their consent. The whole country has gone American Psycho. The only difference is that Trump would never be seen in a gym.
American Psycho was written to shock and horrify, and it succeeded. The book was dropped by its original publisher and was sold wrapped in plastic in many countries so kids couldn’t accidentally read it. Yet, it was also a satire. It was written to troll us, to expose the very hypocrisies of our society, and to make a mockery of those who clutch their pearls for scenes of fictional torture but tolerate the circumstances that could make such scenes possible in reality. Is that so far from Trump?
Elected on a base of 4-chan trolls, Nazi Frog memes, and Q-anon wingnuts, he’s exposed the United States for what it is: a deeply divided country, haunted by past traumas and founded on racist ideology that it’s never reconciled with. Today’s battle lines are pitched on the most basic issues — human rights, equality, and democracy. Religious conservatives, “family values” conservatives, working class and wealthy conservatives were all ready, like Bateman with his pizza, to ditch their usual talking points and sell their souls to the Donald. And he may have lost this election, but it’ll be hard to put all the fascist toothpaste he’s squeezed out of the country back in its tube.
If we’re living in a horror movie, it’s worth remembering that there’s always one more scare, just when you think you’re safe. A lot could still happen between now and January 20. There’s talk of Presidential Pardons and coups d’êtats. There’s a last-minute clear out going on at the Pentagon and another one with asylum seekers in ICE facilities. Some of these people will die violently if deported — so he’s deporting them now, before it’s too late. No bright future awaits them. No caped crusader is arriving to save the day.
If there’s one more lesson I learned from American Psycho, it’s this: when a psycho tells you they will murder you, you should listen. We’ve spent a week celebrating, getting ready the bleach and mops to disinfect the COVID and grease stains out of the White House walls. Singing “celebrate good times, come on!” Meanwhile, the militias are arming themselves, checking their weapons, waiting for a word from their leader.
I’m sorry to be a downer. But American Psycho isn’t always a fun book. And the US isn’t always a fun country. Patrick Bateman spends his days dismembering corpses and leaving rotten piles of flesh around his fancy New York apartment. He kills a kid at the zoo in broad daylight and he gets away with it. Trump has done that with our whole country, and he probably will too. He’s spent all week telling us he’s not going anywhere, and as much as we’d like to ignore him, he’s probably right. This story may have run its course, but who’s to say he won’t be back in 4 years for an ever shittier sequel? Not all books have happy endings. When you invite a psycho into the White House, don’t be surprised when it’s hard to wash out the blood stains.
