For quite some time — off and on since the Republican Party became the structural support for carrying out any delusion Donald Trump wishes to pretend is reality — I've found myself thinking of the Hans Christian Andersen story "The Emperor's New Clothes." Like many people, I've waited for the moment that will be the equivalent of a little child in the crowd calling out the obvious truth: that our emperor is naked.
It hasn't happened.
So instead, I thought I would get my hands on an illustrated copy of the tale to remind myself of how it is told. Looking around online, this 1977 version, retold by Ruth Belov Gross with illustrations by Jack Kent, was most appealing. So I bought a copy:
The thing I had forgotten about the story is that it involves two con men who lie to the king about their ability to make the finest cloth. They say that "everybody knows" about their wondrous cloth, but some people cannot see it, even when they look right at it — because those people are too stupid and bad at their jobs.
The con men pretend to weave at looms...
...and do a lot of fake sewing of the clothes, all night long.
Several ministers and finally the emperor himself check out their work as they go along, and though none of these inspectors see any fabric, they each pretend they do. Why? Because they don't want to be thought stupid and bad at their jobs.
By the time the emperor gets dressed in his new outfit, he appears to be convinced it's real. "My new clothes feel light as a feather," he says.
As he goes out on procession in front of the people, none of the adults along the parade route say a word about what is — or is not — before their eyes. (The book's text verbally says they are going along with it, but their round eyes in Kent's illustration seem to contradict that.)
Then, on the far right of the illustration, a little child points and says to her mother, "He hasn't got anything on!"
And suddenly the crowd's consensus shifts:
Which we in the present day will probably never get — when the emperor realizes he's naked in front of the populace, and he is humiliated, as he should be.
The difference between Andersen's tale and our reality is that the con men in our government are not external actors, fooling the emperor, but the emperor himself and those closest to him. Fooling far too many of our fellow citizens, and fooling or intimidating (or buying off) the Republican Party.
Plus, Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist, among several other mental deficiencies and personality disorders.
But it's nice to entertain the fantasy for a little while.
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