The Donald J. Trump Guide to Classic Fairy Tales
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Donald Trump, as even some of his fiercest admirers will admit, is not always a paragon of personal virtue. Although the president’s aides sometimes treat him like he is a toddler, as the political scientist Daniel Drezner has observed, he’s not an especially well-behaved one. Trump often acts in ways that would result in detention or other punishment for an elementary-school student: bald-faced dishonesty, name-calling, unkindness, refusal to share, and an inability to use an inside voice. Put another way, Trump sometimes seems as though he missed out on all of the lessons that children are supposed to learn from fables and fairy tales. (Meanwhile, his administration is seeking to evict some lessons about tolerance from classrooms.) But perhaps that’s uncharitable: Trump isn’t ignoring those fables; he’s just taking different lessons away from them than the familiar ones. Here’s a set of classic stories and their morals, reinterpreted for MAGA political correctness.
“The Three Billy Goats Gruff”
Plot: Three brother goats must cross a bridge guarded by a malicious troll who wants to eat them. Walking in succession, they are able to trick the greedy troll into waiting for the third and largest brother, who throws the troll into the water, killing him. With the troll slain, the bridge is free for all to pass.
Moral: The goats could have saved time and made money by threatening to destroy the bridge and kill the troll, then proposing a joint venture with the troll to split the proceeds paid by those wishing to cross the bridge.
The Rainbow Fish
Plot: A fish is covered in beautiful iridescent scales. The scales make him very proud, but they also make him isolated in society, because other fish envy them and resent the Rainbow Fish for not sharing. After giving a single scale away, he makes his first friend. Soon, he has given away all of the scales except for one, and has created a tight-knit social group with the other fish.
Moral: Friendships are fundamentally transactional.
“Goldilocks and the Three Bears”
Plot: A family of three bears, upon preparing their breakfast, find it too hot to eat and decide to take a walk. When they return, they discover that a girl named Goldilocks has sampled their breakfast, sat in (and broken one of) their chairs, and is now sleeping in one of their beds. Goldilocks, startled by the bears’ arrival, jumps out the window and is never heard from again.
Moral: People with golden hair are entitled to whatever they want and must not face consequences for their actions, especially if those are official acts.
“The Pied Piper of Hamelin”
Plot: The burghers of a small German town beset with a rat infestation hire a man with a magical pipe to lure the rodents away, which he does, coaxing them to their death in a nearby river. But when he comes to collect his reward, the local authorities refuse to pay him. In retaliation, the piper uses his instrument to lure away the town’s children, who are never seen again.
Moral: Always pay vendors what they are owed. Charismatic European leaders are a threat to the future of your society.
“The Ant and the Grasshopper”
Plot: An industrious ant spends all summer gathering food for the cold months, while a lazy grasshopper dances and sings. Once winter hits, the grasshopper is cold and hungry, and goes begging for food from the ant, who refuses to share any of its bounty, upbraiding the grasshopper for failing to plan.
Moral: Ants are small and weak, and the grasshopper is entitled to destroy them and take the food he needs. He might also consider levying tariffs.
“Hansel and Gretel”
Plot: Two young children are abandoned in the wilderness by their parents, who cannot afford to feed them. They come to the house of a witch, who locks them up and plans to cook and eat them. But when the witch tries to put Hansel into the oven, Gretel pushes her in instead, burning her to death. The children, freed, take the witch’s treasure and return home with a means to live.
Moral: Unaccompanied minors are a violent danger and must be expelled.
“Rumpelstiltskin”
Plot: After a foolish miller falsely asserts that his daughter can spin straw into gold, the king imprisons her and says that he will marry her if the story is true and kill her if it is not. Weeping in her cell, she is visited by a magical imp who offers to turn straw into gold for her in return for her firstborn. The ruse works, and she marries the king and bears a child. The imp returns for the baby, and the queen is bereft. The imp agrees to give up his claim if she can guess his name, the wildly implausible “Rumpelstiltskin.” Although she cannot guess the name, she overhears him saying it to himself and is able to keep her child.
Moral: If you’re in the business of turning things into gold, trying to keep a low profile is counterproductive. Just plaster your name all over everything.
“Cinderella”
Plot: A girl is mistreated by her stepsisters, who call her Cinderella. One day, an invitation comes for all young women to come to a ball so that the prince can choose a wife. The wicked stepsisters force Cinderella to stay home working, but her fairy godmother provides a magical gown and carriage—with a warning that she must leave by midnight, when she will revert to her normal appearance. At the ball, the prince is smitten but cannot get her name before she dashes out just before midnight, leaving behind one glass slipper. The following day, he canvasses the kingdom until he finds the woman who fits the slipper and marries her. They live happily ever after.
Moral: This story’s message is perplexing, riddled with mysteries and contradictions. Why would it matter whether the shoe fits, and why would a wealthy prince want to stay married to the same person forever? And how big was the prince’s ballroom anyway?
Related:
- David Brooks: Why do so many people think Trump is good?
- The infantilization of President Trump (From 2017)
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Today’s News
- The Strait of Hormuz has reopened to commercial traffic, according to Iran’s foreign minister. However, President Trump said on social media that the U.S. blockade on Iranian ships will remain until “OUR TRANSACTION WITH IRAN IS 100% COMPLETE.”
- A 10-day cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah has taken effect, prompting thousands of displaced families to return to southern Lebanon. Israeli forces remain in Lebanon and have warned residents not to return, and Hezbollah has not clearly endorsed the truce.
- Testifying before House lawmakers, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that a new study finding no link between Tylenol use in pregnancy and autism is “garbage” and should be retracted.
Dispatches
- The Books Briefing: Lena Dunham’s new memoir is a fascinating primary source of Hollywood in the 2010s, Boris Kachka writes.
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Evening Read
Iran Had a Doomsday Weapon All Along
By Alan Eyre
President Trump has said that he went to war to stop Iran from ever having a nuclear bomb. Unfortunately, the war he launched led Iran to discover that it already had an extremely effective doomsday weapon—one that promised the economic equivalent of mutual assured destruction. The Strait of Hormuz has always been vulnerable; the United States has always known that Iran might try to close it if attacked. But neither Washington nor Tehran imagined how easy it would be for Iran to do so, how hard it would be for the U.S. to reopen it, or how widely and rapidly the economic effects of a closed strait would fan out.
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Culture Break
Watch. David Sims on the real crisis of The Pitt’s second season (now streaming on HBO Max).
Read. Humankind has devised a new form of debasement, an eighth deadly sin, James Parker writes.
Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
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