At weekends in our summerhouse at Quogue on Long Island, we go out to buy the newspapers and paper-cup coffee at the busy 7-Eleven in Westhampton. Several brisk young Hispanic women serve the long line of customers. Nobody mentions Donald Trump, though his latest vomit about deporting everyone like them is often on the front pages of the papers they hand us. The hurt and angst it must inflict may be mitigated somewhat in New York by the moral clarity of the city’s Daily News editorials blasting Trump as ‘un-American’, and the music video ‘Amnesty Don’, a spoof western mocking his talk of ‘going soft on immigration’. To the rage of Trumpkins, it’s gone viral:
From the west rode a soft and flaccid man with fear in his eyes and a burnt orange tan… He said he’d deport Mexicans before they raped our wives and ban a million Muslims before they took white lives.
The other evening we were invited to a drinks party for alarmed Democrats to hear from Frank Luntz, a Republican hawk and Fox News pollster. Most of us were worried about the xenophobic scare campaign Trump has let loose. But just as bad is the damage to the political system he’s exploited. The man who lives only to win has primed a time bomb for when he loses, saying the election is ‘rigged’. The extremist Tea Party Republicans in Congress, denied the White House again, will continue to block every Democratic proposal to get the country moving.
New York after Labor Day is one long echo of Bob Mankoff’s unforgettable cartoon in the New Yorker. Exasperated man on phone fixing a date: ‘No, Thursday’s out. How about never — is never good for you?’ Everyone is already double-booked.
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