Wednesday
As I work my way through Terry Pratchett’s disk world series, I have come across one that applies to our Conman-in-Chief. Going Postal is about a man who makes a living selling fake diamonds, committing forgeries, and engaging in other fraudulent actions until he is caught and hanged.
As it turns out, however, Moist Van Lipwig is not actually hanged, although all the world (and he himself) thinks this has occurred. Rather, the patrician tyrant Vetinari has other plans in mind for him: he is to salvage the postal system, which is going under because of competition from a watch tower signal system. (Although writing about a pre-electricity world, Pratchett has in mind the threat e-mail poses to snail mail.) Vetinari figures that a man with nothing to lose–Moist will be executed for real if he fails to (ahem) deliver—is the right man for the job.
Vetinari appears to think, as did many Trump voters in 2016, that a slippery crook can accomplish more than an earnest bureaucrat. Trump even made this part of his pitch: if he can cheat the system while a businessman, then he can use those talents on behalf of America.
Once Moist becomes postmaster, he does what many fervently hoped would happen with Trump: he grows into the job, using his experience with fraud to sniff out fraud. In the process, he must battle Reacher Gilt, an even greater conman who heads the signal system. Because “the Grand Trunk” is a monopoly that ruthlessly crushes competition (including the post office), it has become a cash cow for its corrupt board of directors.
Aside: In his podcast Why Is This Happening, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes recently had an extended interview with political science professor Leah Stokes, who studies the corrupt practices of utility monopolies, including how they often buy political favors seek while suppressing alternative energy technologies. As monopolies, they have guaranteed profits with little accountability.
Reacher Gilt is the conman who resembles Trump. Unlike Moist but like Trump, he turns down a public service opportunity. Like Trump, he is open about his corruption: while the president has boasted publicly of cheating on his taxes, Gilt signals to the world that he is a pirate, wearing an eye patch and carrying a parrot that periodically screeches out “twelve and a half percent” (instead of “pieces of eight”). Moist is awed by how Gilt says the quiet part out loud:
Moist had worked hard at his profession and considered himself pretty good at it, but if he had been wearing his hat, he would have taken it off right now. He was in the presence of a master. He could feel it in the hand, see it in that one commanding eye. Were things otherwise, he would have humbly begged to be taken on as an apprentice, scrub the man’s floors, cook his food, just to sit at the feet of greatness and learn how to do the three-card trick using whole banks. If Moist was any judge, any judge at all, the man in front of him was the biggest fraud he’d ever met. And he advertised it. That was…style. The pirate curls, the eyepatch, even the damn parrot. Twelve and a half percent, for heaven’s sake, didn’t anyonespot that? He told them what he was, and they laughed and loved him for it. It was breathtaking.
Reacher Gilt’s bullshit brings to mind Trump’s own word salads. The asterisk at the end of the passage is Patchett’s:
Now, like an apprentice staring at the work of a master, [Moist] read Reacher Gilt’s words on the still-damp newspaper.
It was garbage, but it had been cooked by an expert. Oh, yes. You had to admire the way perfectly innocent words were mugged, ravished, stripped of all true meaning and decency, and then sent to walk the gutter for Reacher Gilt, although “synergistically” had probably been a whore from the start. The Grand Trunk’s problems were clearly the result of some mysterious spasm in the universe and had nothing to do with greed, arrogance, and willful stupidity. Oh, the Grand Trunk management had made mistakes—oops, “well-intentioned judgment which, with the benefit of hindsight, might regrettably have been, in some respect, in error”—but these had mostly occurred, it appeared, which correcting “fundamental systemic errors” committed by the previous management. No one was sorry for anything, because no living creature had done anything wrong; bad things had happened by spontaneous generation in some weird, chilly, ghemoetical otherword, and “were to be regretted.”*
*Another bastard phrase that’d sell itself to any weasel in a tight corner
Gilt actually is better at this kind of evasion than Trump, who straight up lies, doesn’t admit any regrets, and simply blames other people. Still, Moist’s assessment of Gilt’s language applies to Trump as well:
Meaningless, stupid words, from people without wisdom or intelligence or any skill beyond the ability to water the currency of expression. Oh, the Grand Trunk stood for everything, from life and liberty to Mom’s homemade Distressed Pudding. It stood for everything, except anything.
The parallels don’t end there. Once Gilt has his hooks into you, you’re in the same situation as Trump’s enablers. In other words, everything Gilt touches dies. After Gilt employs a banshee to kill one of the Grand Trunk’s board members (think of this as a rightwing primary challenge), the others are cowed into submission:
And then it occurred to one or two of the board that the jovial “my friends” in the mouth of Reacher Gilt, so generous with his invitations, his little tips, his advice, and his champagne, was beginning, in its harmonics and overtones, to sound just like the word “pal” in the mouth of a man in an alley who was offering cosmetic surgery with a broken bottle in exchange for not being given any money. On the other hand, they’d been safe so far so maybe it was worth following the tiger to the kill. Better to follow at the beast’s heel than be its prey.
It so happens that Moist, against all odds, outduels Gilt and saves the post office and signal system both. Gilt is exposed, brought to justice, and offered a chance to reform the Royal Mint. Vetinari offers this choice to him in the same way that he earlier offered Moist a choice:
May I just add, Mr. Lipwig, that behind you there is a door. If at any time in this interview you feel you wish to leave, you have only to step through it and you will never hear from me again.
When Moist checks out the door, he discovers that
there was nothing beyond, and that included a floor. In the manner of one who is going to try all possibilities, he took the remnant of the spoon out of his pocket and let it drop. It was quite a long time before he heard the jingle.
Moist accepts Vetinari’s offer, catches the public service fever, and becomes an exemplary citizen. Gilt steps through the door.
Trump, who has never accepted the offer to serve, deserves to be sent through the other door on November 3.
Additional thought: Going Postal seems particularly relevant these days as we watch America’s current postal head Louis DeJoy in hot water over reimbursing employees for campaign contributions, working to sabotage mail-in voting, receiving money from the postal system for his own businesses (some of which are in direct competition with the USPS), and lying to Congress. For a brief moment, Moist explores ways in which he can make money from his position. In the end, however, he finds it much more rewarding to see the joy that arises from a well-functioning mail system.