The news of the great Sean Connery’s death reminded me of a scene from the ‘Man who would be king’. In that scene, after being arrested and standing in front of an army commissioner accused of a blackmail attempt, Daniel Dravot (Connery) stands alongside Peachy Carnehan (Michael Caine).
“There may be no criminal charges against you,” says the commissioner, “but I’ll see these files reach Calcutta with a recommendation that you be deported as political undesirables, detriments to the dignity of the Empire.»
“Detriments you call us?” responds Peachy “Detriments? Well, I want to remind you it was «detriments» like us that built this bloody Empire.”
The same narrative is intertwined into Trump’s electoral psychedelics. His votes pool is filled with the once-great US ‘Empire’s’ romantic vision, and the remedy for its alleged decline stands stamped across his devoted followers, coined into God-Guns-Trump hierarchy of values. Trump feeds on their irrational fears, and as any skilled conman/showman steers their actions towards his profit.
He is a prodigious pupil of Daniel Dravot’s teachings from the film: “A man who knows how to drill men can always be a King,» as Dravot confessed to Kipling. Trump is a king in a kingdom of men drilled by ignorance, paranoia, and poverty. Trump’s America is his own Kafiristan (fictional land from ‘The man who would be a king’) and the past four years of his presidency was nothing but the shameless intent to build his own dynasty.
On the 3rd of November, his followers are called to obey and renew their trust in the King of Kafiristan, where alternative facts, vulgarity, and recklessness are royal attributes.
I hope that the 3rd of November is the beginning of awakening. That his followers will soon realize a fraud he is and start cutting the ropes. However, I don’t see the ending scene being performed with the same dignity as Daniel Dravot. Trump will not leave singing. There is nothing among his personal traits that could be related to stoicism.
Boris Matijas 