America finally found a good use for Trump's barricade around the White House. Getty Image. Front art by Ed Wexler

The petulant, pathetic man-baby still babbles in denial, refusing to acknowledge the same electoral numbers he repeatedly crowed were "a landslide" when he won them in 2016 because then he'd have to accept he's become his own worst insult - a loser, and a snivellingly sore one, at the hands of what he derided as “the worst candidate in the history of presidential politics,” and he should know. Meanwhile, the world turns against him and his dangerous, beyond embarassing machinations. He's now lost 16 long-shot court cases, several in Pennsylvania - no recount, no challenge of ballot deadlines because "the lawfully cast vote of every citizen must count" - and on Monday even the right-wing Supreme Court declined to hear about fictional illegal votes there. Blithely ignoring a surging pandemic that's already struck down at least 40 members of his inner circle, he stays busy floating bizarre coup scenarios, frantically firing people in a seemingly senseless purge largely orchestrated by a 30-year-old former college quarterback with a gambling problem, and surrounding himself with singularly sycophantic goons like National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien, who's reportedly "enabling the mayhem" to the point of telling staff they'll be fired if they say Joe Biden's name in Trump's presence. From one source: "It's like dealing with a lunatic on the subway. Everyone just kind of sits and stares ahead, pretends they can't hear him, and waits for him to eventually get off...What a fucking clown show." Even former friends are done. "This is just insanity," Howard Stern said Monday, dismissing Trump's supposed plan to start a news network "that’ll fail inside of a year like all the other businesses" and urging him, “For once, do something good for the country. Calm down your fucking loony hillbilly friends and tell them you lost the election."

Twitter, of course, has joined the fray, excorciating him after his sick and infantile "I won the election!" tantrum: "You are a strange sad little man," "No you didn't, grandpa," "I won the Grand Prix/the lottery/the sandbox!" London's Creature has launched ‘The Great Unfollow‘ campaign, encouraging people to "turn his most powerful weapon against him" by switching off Trump, choosing love by supporting refugees, and linking to a more worthy account to follow - Kamala Harris. The campaign #DeactivateTrump    seeks to get him kicked off Twitter entirely for promoting"violence, misinformation, gaslighting." Many efforts focus on his fave epithet: A troll rerouted Loser.com to his Wikipedia page, Mad Dog PAC has been circling D.C. with their "LOSER" truck, poems have been written - "I WON I WON I WON I WON" - veterans, those "suckers and losers," have raged at him. Per the meme warning you don't want to be the kind of person who, when you lose your job, the entire world dances in the street, the rejoicing has been widespread. In Scotland, which has long despised Trump, officials are calling for an investigation into possible money laundering at his persistently failing golf clubs. Australians made a delectably brutal video to say you're fired. And Irishman Damien Lane, speaking for many, celebrated both the news of a vaccine and the "small-handed one’s demise" as chances to "rid society of its worst ills." Noting that, "Schadenfreude has been my main pleasure these last ten days," he declares, "Freedom’s bonfires have been lit." Even in cold and rain and lockdowns, he writes, "without him...we can endure anything....Watching Trump’s presidency ebb away was akin to being transported back in time to 1512 to see Michelangelo put the finishing strokes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel...It was to live in the beating heart of truth." Dress up, dance, fill your bath with goats' milk, he urges: "Now is the time for joy."

The Latest Dictator, by Canadian poet Julie Bruck

"The President is believed to be hiding in the basement."  —BBC News                                                                                                                                                                                                 

He who refuses to be dragged 

from office, to relinquish offshore 

assets or his own people — whom 

he gasses for their own good —

is actually upstairs in the Imperial 

Bedroom, guarding his country 

from infidels and zombies. 

His two remaining aides hover, 

having long since drawn heavy 

drapes against the crowded city 

square, having cut off incoming calls.

He could have had them both 

braised and served at state dinners.

The Green Book is open on the table,

but he sits and stares past it. In the last

few hours, despite the bright Hawaiian shirt—

properly insouciant garb—he’s grown wild-

eyed as a man about to be discovered 

hiding in a hole, a dog about to be kicked.

And now the dogs, they gather in the square.