"Trumped in the Looking-Glass: On the accelerating anticipation of disaster that attaches to the Trump Presidency"

Abstract

The Trump White House, where calculation routinely turns into obfuscation, is perhaps best understood as akin to the world depicted in Lewis Carroll’s "Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There", but with one major difference. Unlike the resilient Alice, who, having stepped through the looking-glass, insists on truth and accuracy when confronted by a world of reversals, contradictions, nonsense and irrationality, Trump reverses this process. Captivated by his own image and, hence, both unwilling and unable to step through the looking-glass for fear of disturbing and dissolving that narcissistic fascination with his preferred self-image, Trump has dragged the uninhibited and distor..