From the Asylum

You laughed at him, you thought he was nothing more than a raging lunatic with the same obsessions, the same faces of a Charles Manson. A spoiled and unscrupulous daddy’s boy who’d have ruined the world one day or another, for a simple childish whim. By simply pushing a button. The truth is that he is/has been the president of one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world, thus a symbol of our time. And as such, you can also mock, hate or punch him, but actually, every time you do it, you’re just punching yourself. Only you don’t have his own poker face, and the marks on your cheekbones are much more evident. Often they are but the signs of the ambiguity or hypocrisy you still believe to be an infallible weapon to fight “evil”.

Maybe you still don’t realize that you are not acting so differently from him, so your criticism makes no sense. You don’t realize that the superheroes you invoked so much have gradually gone away, also because of your indifference and contempt for them. So, in one way or another, today we are all a bit Donald Trump, making fun of themselves. From the same asylum. Now believing that once getting rid of him, the world will finally return to shine like never before.

Born in 1946, in Queens, a borough of New York City, Donald John Trump is the 45th president of the United States. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality. After a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School, in 1971, he took charge of his family’s real-estate business, renamed it The Trump Organization, and expanded its operations from Queens and Brooklyn into Manhattan.

The company built or renovated skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. Trump also produced and hosted The Apprentice, a reality television series, from 2003 to 2015. As of 2020, Forbes estimated his net worth to be $2.1 billion.

Trump entered the 2016 presidential race as a Republican and, despite not being favored in most forecasts, he was elected over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, although he lost the popular vote. He became the oldest first-term U.S. president, and the first without prior military or government service. His election and policies have sparked numerous protests. Trump has made many false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency. The statements have been documented by fact-checkers, and the media have widely described the phenomenon as unprecedented in American politics. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged, sexist or racist.

His back-and-forth with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, on “whose is bigger” — the rocket — have become fertile ground for illustrators and magazine cartoonists, as well as inspiring series or advertising campaigns such as Superheroes Punching Trump or Some People Should Never Have Been Born. The cartoon by The Australian Financial Review’s own David Rowe became a viral hit in the days after Trump’s election victory, while the pastel piece Make America Great Again by Los Angeles-based artist Illma Gore, featuring a nude Donald Trump with a small penis, has been banned from public display in the US and frequently removed from Facebook — she appears to have received death threats and been punched in the face because of the artwork.