Mars, watch out — Trump’s coming for you too

The destructive policies the new US president outlined at his inauguration may indeed make an escape to other planets more appealing. The frigid weather outside was, meanwhile, at least probably good practice for life on Mars, a territory Trump would soon claim for the United States during his inaugural speech: “And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.” This, to be sure, was not the only territorial conquest Trump promised yesterday. Declaring at the start of his speech that “the golden age of America begins right now”, Trump went on to express numerous other hallucinations, including that “national unity is now returning to America”. As usual, the continuous invocation of God during the inauguration ceremony made a fine mockery of the ostensible separation of church and state in the US, and Trump revealed the reason he had survived a July assassination attempt in the state of Pennsylvania: “I was saved by God to make America great again.” Last but not least, Trump took advantage of the overlap of his inauguration with Martin Luther King Jr Day, celebrated annually in the US on the third Monday of January, to pledge that “we will make his dream come true” – which would probably be easier if Trump himself weren’t a bona fide racist. But yesterday’s inaugural charade was an exercise in nihilism – and, as I return to my scorpions and Trump goes about making dystopia great again, I think I’ll take Mars over the “golden age of America” any day.