Bad Loser

I don't know about you, but I'm going to miss Donald Trump.


I don't know whether I'm going to miss him because he'll lose, and stop being a constant source of surreal entertainment, or because he'll win, and we'll all be dead soon. But one thing is for sure - we're in a golden period of time, soon to end, where every day is filled with bonkers proclamations from the world's most powerful idiot.


It's kind of fun, isn't it? Going on Twitter to see what panicked garbage he's hurling at the world today. Who will he hate next? What supremely illogical sentences will escape from his sparking, fizzing brain? What lie will he confidently chisel into the side of a mountain and declare the word of God almighty?


Although, of course, there's the strong possibility that he won't go away even if he does lose. He is very committed to the idea of not losing, and this commitment may well be undiminished by the fact of not winning.


Because the election is rigged, you see. That's why he'll lose. Unless he wins. In which case, presumably, it suddenly isn't rigged, and the election process is very trustworthy. His faith in the system seems to comprehensively rely upon the system working the way he wants it to.


It's hard to frame this kind of person, isn't it? Intelligent people are struggling to categorise this orange buffoon, whose behaviour defines all rational explanation. What kind of person devotes massive energy to winning a game, only to denounce the validity of winning that game in the first place?


He reminds us of something, that's for sure. A child, maybe. Trump is very keen on that petulant, backwards logic that children employ to reverse engineer justifications for their behaviour. Start with the conclusion you want, then work backwards to find a reason why that conclusion must be right.


But he's not a child. Is he? He looks too big. They let him run companies, and own houses, and touch women. Well, maybe not all the time, that last one. But for the most part he seems like an adult.


Maybe he's two or three children in a big, weird, oddly fitting grown-up suit. That would explain a lot. In fact, it's less implausible that the probable truth: here is a grown, intelligent man who has invested himself, publicly, in a massive global tantrum that makes literally no fucking sense whatsoever.

I'll tell you what he reminds me of, and it's very specific. He reminds me of the mother of my first ever proper girlfriend, an equally unreasonable woman called... well, let's call her April Fenchurch.


The parents of your first girlfriend are a worrying prospect. You've never done this romance thing before, and it's hard enough to make it work with the object of your affection. Especially if you are 16 year old me, and composed entirely of stupidity and hormones.


And then you're confronted with her parents. And they are, rightly, suspicious that you are a horrible pillock, hell bent on ruining the life of their lovely daughter. And then one of them is April Bloody Fenchurch.


April was my first encounter with backwards logic. She refused to be wrong. She refused to lose. And it wasn't cool, like when I do it. It was irritating and frustrating.


One New Year's Eve, we played a game of Bible Trivial Pursuits. That's right. New Years Eve. Two years previously, I'd been standing alone in a back street, staring at the spinning stars above, out of my mind on gin. Now I was already wondering if my life was over and all the happiness was behind me. This was their idea of fun. Bible Trivial Pursuit.


Because April was a Christian. And so was I, but only very recently. I'd gone to church in pursuit of her lovely daughter and got kind of roped into everything else along the way. And, of course, I was trying hard to seem presentable and mature, and not a stupid twitchy deviant who would have much preferred to be out drinking snakebite and black.

Yum.

Trouble kicked in before the game had started. April made some reference to the Three Kings, who pop up in the nativity, bringing Jesus gifts and such. I can't remember what she said about them. But I know that I'd just learned a Christian thing at church, and I wanted to share my new understanding.


"They weren't Kings," I said, unwisely. The room went quiet. April's friends and relatives looked in horror, at me, and then in excited anticipation, at her.


"They were," she replied. Straight in, no messing.


"No, I just found out. They were wise men. People often call them kings, but that's not what the Bible says."


April did not like this. She'd said a Fact, and now I was challenging the Fact. So she employed the kind of nonsense technique that I now recognise as false syllogism, but which, at the time, just confused me.


"Solomon was a king, wasn't he?" she said.


"Um, yes."


"And he was wise?"


"He was..."


"So in the Bible a king is a wise man and so when they said they were wise men it's the same as them being Kings."


Ta daa! April went back to shuffling the question cards. The friends and family relaxed, glad to have a way out of this - which I'm assuming was not the first terrible situation of its kind. I sat there, trying to work out how I had been given an answer that was somehow both very logical but also definitely bullshit.

"Aaaaaaaaagggggghhh!"

We played the game. April was really bad at the game. It wasn't just Kings she knew nothing about. It was almost everything the game asked. To be honest, none of us were very good at it. I think you'd have to be a very special kind of person to be good at Bible Trivial Pursuits. Very special indeed.


But the way most of us reacted to our failure to guess the 8th wife of Nehrat the Ethiopian, was to accept our ignorance and be quite relieved. Not April. As has been noted, she was not a fan of being wrong.


So it transpired that she wasn't wrong. No. The game was wrong. The whole thing. This poor collection of cardboard and coloured dice went from being an excellent, spiritual way of spending New Years Eve, to being a stupid, lying whore of a thing that was made by idiots, for idiots and knew nothing about anything.


April's husband, Paul - a fragile mouse of a man - was forced, by April, to read through much of the New Testament in an effort to prove the stupid game wrong. We had to pause the game every time April's answers didn't tally with reality, while Paul flicked sadly through a massive Bible. Every now and then he'd find the relevant bit. He'd read, silently, patiently, for a few moments. Then I'd see panic in his eyes. Oh dear. It was clear that whatever he'd found wasn't going to be the answer April was looking for.


"Well, there's lots of ways to look at it..." he'd say, hesitantly.


So passed the most depressing New Year of all time. No, second most depressing. But still. Bloody awful.

What must it be like, I wonder, to live in such massive fear of being wrong? To exert such tremendous effort against reality itself, to avoid the fact of failure? Terrifying, I imagine. You have to dismantle the very language upon which all meaning relies. You have to construct a new version of logic, a bizarre distorting mirror of cause and effect, action and consequence.


As I get older I feel less annoyance with April, and more pity. And then I see Trump, and all the old feelings come flooding back. A man who will not lose. Who reverse engineers reality to suit his tiny minded, timid, feeble grasp on the world.

He's an idiot, but it's no wonder he's popular. There's a world of Aprils out there, not wanting to have to think, unequipped to deal with being told they're wrong. People who'd prefer the message that listening isn't important - you are the all conquering kings of existence. Carry on with your prejudice and your greed. Ignore your weaknesses - they don't exist. Do whatever is easiest. Don't let anyone tell you what to do.

It sounds awesome.

Thanks, April, for showing me - a long time ago - that it's not.