There is a section of the Passover seder that has been circling around in my head called “Dayenu” or (read right to left) דַּיֵּנוּ. It translates to, “It would have been enough.” Part song, part call-and-response, a reader lists the miracles and wonders God enacted during the exodus from Egypt. After each item listed, the responders say, “Dayenu” to acknowledge that He had already provided, and they would have been grateful even if He had stopped there.
For example, “If He had taken us from Egypt, but not parted the Red Sea… Dayenu.”
It would have been enough.
I have a different version of Dayenu in my head for Donald Trump, a man I hope never to write about ever again after this.
What can I say about this orange-lacquered sack of fart vapor that hasn’t been said already? The man’s brain is a half-eaten pudding cup that has been left out in the sun for a week. And the most complimentary thing I can say about him is that, at one point, it’s possible his brain was a half-eaten pudding cup that hadn’t yet been left out in the sun.
But he never had a full pudding cup! I’m sure of that!
I’m confident he cannot now, nor could he ever, name the three branches of the U.S. government. I think, if someone wanted to, they could tell him the president is the “Execution Branch” of the government, and he would believe it. He’d probably like it! This just hit me as I was typing, and I feel such… resignation. He’d like the sound of being the “Executioner.” I’m certain of it.
I don’t know how to speak Hebrew, so I don’t know if “It should have been enough” can be translated accurately into one word. But that’s what it is.
In my head, it goes like this:
When he bragged about using his status as a celebrity to sexually assault women…
It should have been enough.
When he mocked a disabled reporter…
It should have been enough.
When he watched hundreds of thousands of Americans die from a highly contagious virus while spouting misinformation, inciting violence against Asians and Asian-Americans, and failing to provide necessary medical supplies and aid to doctors, nurses, and hospitals…
It should have been enough.
When he incited a riot on Capitol Hill…
It should have been enough.
When he was charged and convicted with 34 counts of felony document falsification…
It should have been enough.
When he claimed immigrants were eating people’s cats and dogs, once again blithely stirring up hatred and violence towards a vulnerable population…
It should have been enough.
When he watched a man sieg heil on stage two times at his inauguration, and did nothing…
It should have been enough.
When he began trafficking people to a torture prison in El Salvador, and did not stop when he was ordered to by the courts…
It should have been enough.
When he refused court orders to bring an innocent man back to his family…
It should have been enough.
When he, a man who has made full use of due process of the law time and time again, claimed there wasn’t time to give people due process…
It should have been enough.
When he was told that stores would soon have empty shelves due to tariffs, and responded by saying American children would have to make do with “two dolls instead of thirty”…
It should have been enough.
I could go on. And on. And on. That’s the problem, isn’t it? For all I’ve listed here, there are five hundred things I didn’t list. Children in cages at the border? Saying Kamala Harris “suddenly” became Black? Canada as the 51st state? Thinking “transgenic” mice were transgender??
I would be the proverbial monkey at the typewriter, banging on the keys to infinity, never able to stop because there would always be more. Except I’d never get around to accidentally producing Shakespeare’s plays because I’d be too busy listing crimes and atrocities.
Not to mention stupidities. Donald Trump regularly commits stupidities.
Any one of the things listed above should have been enough. It should have been more than goddamn enough!
This all came about because of a very real question I felt the need to ask my editor a few weeks ago. Before we got into the meat of our um… meeting… homophones are weird… I had to ask her for her opinion on including or excluding politics in the novel. Because Trump’s presidency, his existence, does not work for the Romance genre. And, if I’m being honest, it doesn’t work for reality.
If you met someone who woke up from a ten-year coma today, and listed every major point of Trump’s political career from start to finish, I bet you wouldn’t actually get to finish. I bet they’d stop you pretty quickly. You wouldn’t even be able to get to D.O.G.E. But if you did, that’s where they’d stop you for sure.
“Enough!” they’d yell. “You’re making this up. It doesn’t even sound like good fiction. It sounds like a poor attempt at parody.”
“You’re right, learned ex-coma-patient,” you would respond. “It does sound like the worst kind of parody. Now let’s get you back to bed. I probably should’ve taken your vitals before trying to catch you up on what you missed.” (You are a medical professional in this scenario.)
I mean… can you imagine what would happen if I acknowledged our current reality in the fiction I constructed? It occurred to me that the moment a character brings up Donald Trump, that would be the moment when the book becomes exclusively about Donald Trump. How could they ever talk about anything else?
So I got permission from my editor to not bring up politics. Not anchor the book in any given time period. Not mention who is president. Just not. Full stop.
Because our current president belongs in parody. In farce. In heavy-handed satire.
Like… imagine if you were watching Wall-E, and, instead of the late Fred Willard as the live-action president, you saw Donald Trump. Would you even blink? It feels like he fits there, doesn’t it? It’s so terrifying and sad and ludicrous. It’s… terrsadicrous.
I just needed to get that off my chest. I am so excited to be published and to continue going through this process, but I also feel deeply, tragically, lost. I needed to get the sadness out of me. Now I intend to focus, as much as I can, on the happy. It feels wrong to do that, I’ll admit. I feel a kind of survivor’s guilt maybe? I am (relatively) safe. I am (relatively) secure. So many others aren’t. At time of writing, Kilmar Abrego Garcia still isn’t home with his family. How dare I celebrate at a time like this? But I must. I simply must. It won’t stop me from hurting for all the people who are not safe and secure, but I feel I will truly lose my mind if I can’t also allow myself happiness.
It should have been enough, and enough, and enough. A thousand times over, it should have been enough.
Here’s an art I did of the orange fartsicle:
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