Trump, exhausted by attempts to manufacture new distortions, exaggerations, fabrications, falsifications, untruths, accusations, innuendos, put-downs, insinuations and incitements, falls into a dreamless sleep.
He awakens. Joseph is beside him.
"You're trying too hard," says Joseph, laying a hand on Trump's shoulder. "You have to let the tone of insinuation, of implication rouse the thirst for hatred; let the crowd do most of the work."
Trump leans forward, frustrated & discouraged. "I'm trying, but when they react, I can't resist, I have to get more. It feels like...winning."
Joseph shakes his head, smiling. "But you're not winning, are you? You're here."
Trump looks up at him: "You mean..."
Joseph looks back with smile that contains a rapturous, gleefully sadistic intensity of confirmation.
Trump looks down. "The bottom."
Joseph's smile grows into a mocking leer. "We've all been here, Donald. All of us who decided to engage in...this business." He lifted a clubbed foot to a nearby stone, & crossed his arms, leaning back with the self-assurance of rueful past knowledge.
"First we are amazed that they respond to the obvious instigation, to the barefaced provocation.
"Then," he raises a hand, "we begin to become intoxicated, contemptuous. We expect the response.
We hate them more and more for being foolish enough to give it, yet we still desperately want it, to know that they are still within our grasp, our authority, our command."
He laughs. "Soon, they rule us. We become angry if they don't seem to believe our own lies, & in our anger, we convince ourself that they're actually true."
He looks at Trump with a piercing glare, eyes alight. "That's when the fall begins."
Trump, bent over, hands clasped, looks up. "So, what do I do?"
Joseph responds with a grin of brutal mock lament: "Do? There is nothing to do. There is only this:
Stoke the crowds.
Repeat your stories of past glories.
Enjoy the fall."
