Not Racist, But ...

CW: A bunch of stuff about race and the n-word

     A little story about systemic racism. I moved to a small Pennsylvania town when I was 14 in 1979. I was born and raised in North Jersey until 1976, and while I saw my fair share of racism there, it was a very diverse area and I came into contact with black and Puerto Rican people all the time and never thought much of it.
     My first real exposure to racism was when I got to hang out at the bowling alley where my mother worked and my father bowled on Friday nights. Muhammad Ali was fighting that night, and it was on TV in the bar. My mother took me over at one point and let me hear the people in the bar yelling at the screen, wanting Ali to lose. They were calling him the n-word and hoping he would get injured or even killed.
     BTW, let's not dwell on the fact that my mother was fine with letting her 9 year old son hang out in a bar watching a boxing match with a bunch of drunks! It was very rare that I got to go with them, even though I pestered them all the time. I was an old soul and it was a different time…
     So anyway, when the fight was over, she took me back into the bar and pointed out that all the people who hated Ali were now collecting their money because they had bet on him. She told me they were so racist and hateful that these people would rather lose their bets if it meant that a black man got put in his place, and how wrong that was. My mom was wise like that.
     The thing is, those people felt perfectly comfortable yelling "nigger" in a crowded bar. Even worse, there were plenty of black people in the bar who had no choice but to ignore it. It would get very dangerous for them very quickly if they said anything. It was just the way that it was. Crowds were mixed in Jersey, and there were plenty of white people who thought of some of the black people who frequented the same places as them as friends, or at least acquaintances. They made allowances for certain black people they deemed worthy. I’ve met a lot of white people who were always saying "I don't have a problem with black people, I just hate niggers," which is pretty fucking racist and vile.
     So anyway, we moved to Texas in 1976, and they took racism to new levels. Mexicans were wetbacks or beaners, and the contempt for them was palpable. Most of the people there wanted nothing to do with them. The way they treated black people was jaw dropping. They still called them "boy" and acted like they were still slaves. I never really had any interaction with any Mexican people the whole time I was there because white people and Mexican people just didn’t mix. In my young mind, I guess I assumed that was all well and good, because most of the Texans I encountered told me horror stories about how terrible they were.
     The only thing was, I had met them, I just didn’t know it. I had a couple of friends in school that were first or second generation Mexican, and I didn’t really know it at the time. Due to my upbringing in New Jersey, I just thought of them as Puerto Rican. They certainly weren’t these lazy and dangerous Mexicans I had been hearing so much about!
     I even had a good friend in 7th grade, a girl I developed a crush on. I found out she was Mexican, and that she liked me too, and I was shocked at both revelations. I found it out at the very end of the school year though, and then we moved and I never saw her again. Oh well, young love.
     What was sad about the whole thing is that for a while in my young mind, racist people had somehow trained me to think that Mexican people weren’t human on some level, to the point that I didn’t recognize them as such when I met them. I thought it was normal to use slurs like “wetback,” at least until my parents heard me say it and put a stop to it. The whole time we all regularly went to restaurants and ate Mexican food with our Texan friends. Many of them were truly nice and caring people, they were just racist and didn’t even know it.
     My father worked construction in Texas, and one Saturday he stopped over at his foreman's house. They were going to go somewhere, but his boss told him they couldn't leave until his boys got there. My father assumed he meant his sons, but then a pickup truck full of black guys from the jobsite pulled up.
     They hopped out and the guy gave them instructions on mowing his lawn and tending his flowers and shrubs. They all answered "yes Mr Banks" to all his directions, then set off to his garage for the lawn mower and rakes and whatnot.
     When my father got in the truck and they pulled away, he said to his boss "those are all guys from the job. You pay them to do yard work on the weekends?"
     His boss just laughed and said "Pay them?" He was incredulous.
     "Nah, they're my boys. They know that if they don't come take care of my lawn on weekends there'll be no work for them during the week!"
     We had a neighbor who lived catty cornered to us who was black, and he would sometimes hang out and talk to my dad over the fence. He was a really smart guy, and I liked him. I started to notice that whenever any of the other neighbors were out, he would slip into this kind of Stepin Fetchit persona and voice. He would dumb down everything he said.
     My father noticed too, and one day when they were alone, he asked him about it. The guy seemed embarrassed, but said that he did it because most white people didn't like a black guy who seemed smart, and it could get him beat up or worse.
     I thought of that story years later in the 90s. I worked with a black guy who was a mechanic, and being service manager I had to enter his service tickets in the computer and track what he did for billing. I noticed that whenever I sent him out on a service call, his service sheet was almost illegible. I asked him about it, and he laughed. He explained that he was left handed, but when he was out on a strange job with white guys he didn't know, he would write with his right hand. That way people would think "poor dumb nigger, he can barely write." I was appalled, but he just chuckled and said he was used to it. It was better that they thought he was stupid than risk getting them defensive or confrontational.
     One night, my family got a taste of how it felt to be on the other end of it. Back east, as Italians, we never really faced any racism or hardship because of our ethnicity. We were privileged. So imagine my father’s shock when we went out to eat at a Texas restaurant and the menu had something called a “wop salad.” My father called the waitress over and asked what the hell that was, and she explained matter-of-factly that it was “ … a wop salad. You know, like an Italian, a wop.”
     My father got us all up and we left the restaurant in a huff, but even that was privileged because a lot of minorities would probably just wind up rolling their eyes and adding it to the long list of offensive shit they had to deal with. Speaking up might turn violent for them.
     So anyway, the reason I started this story off by mentioning that I moved to that small-town in Pennsylvania in 1979 is because that year a black family also moved in down the block. I think they were the first black family in town.
     So a bunch of us kids were playing, and an argument broke out. One of the white kids wound up calling one of the black kids the n-word, and the black kid threw a rock at him. The whole block was in turmoil. The next day it was decided that the local head of police, Chief Snyder, would come up and talk to the kids. There were only two police officers in town to rule over, but Snyder had that redneck southern police officer act down. He was a real "big fish, little pond" guy, full of self importance.
     So anyway, he calmly explained what was wrong about the whole incident while seated with the kids, with the parents in a circle around them.
     "First off," he began, talking to the black child, "you can't throw rocks at people. It's dangerous."
     "But he called me a name," the child explained.
     "Yes, and that comes to you," Snyder said, turning to face the white boy. "You can't just call a nigger a nigger!"
     Some of the parents gasped, and then Chief Snyder realized what he said, and got a little flustered.
     "Well, you know what I mean!"
     And like that, the little chat session was over, and the black family moved away soon afterward, and everything went back to normal.
     There's still a lot of racism around here. I remember hearing some guy my father knew talking about how he was proud that his town still didn't have any black people living in it. That was in this century.
     My town has Dorney Park, a huge amusement and water park that draws huge crowds. There are plenty of white people around here who will not go there anymore because it's "full of blacks and Puerto Ricans, and I'm not getting in the same water with them." They feel the same way about a nearby lake, saying it's ruined by all the "animals" that go there now.
     I still know a bunch of black people who slip into a different persona when other white people are around. Code-switching is prevalent.
     The funny thing is, if you asked a lot of these white people, they would tell you they aren't racist at all. They will point out that they know some minorities personally. One guy told me he couldn't possibly be racist because he got a Puerto Rican girl pregnant and has a mixed race kid. Keep in mind that he also has a swastika tattooed on his chest. They truly don't get it at all.
      So I still think we have a long way to go before racism isn't a real problem. I like to think positively, but I don't think it will ever go away. Being white, other white people will still say things that shock me, without a hint of embarrassment or shame. They think we're in the same club, but we're not. I'm still flabbergasted whenever I hear it, and I speak up and call it out when I do, but I'm not sure that I change many minds.
     I guess I just have to remember that they aren't really racist. They don't have a problem with black people, they just hate niggers…

Trump In The Afterlife: Chapter 6 Regroup

     Over the next few weeks, Marty tried again and again to take Trump to Earth to help people in crisis, and over and over again, Trump failed miserably. He didn’t even try. Marty had seen a little glimmer of hope when Trump seemed a tiny bit invested in Kim’s situation, but it quickly faded. Trump had become even more closed off and resistant to even attempting to help anyone. He seemed convinced that due to his status and based on his previous life experience, he would simply be allowed into heaven no matter what he did.
     Marty had observed the fact that many humans completely ignored any personal responsibilities for their actions. It was one of the things that made Marty indifferent to people. In fact, it made him loathe them most of the time. Trump was the absolute worst, though. He had never seen someone just eschew all self-accountability for everything he had done. Trump simply followed any compulsion or stupid idea that popped into his head, and didn’t give a thought to any consequences it might have. He didn’t seem to learn in hindsight. He didn't even seem to be aware of hindsight, for that matter.
     Usually because the consequences for his actions rarely affected him. They affected other people, and Trump was such a raging narcissist and sociopath that he was hardly aware of other people at all. Just by virtue of being himself on a world stage made it possible for him to act as a siren call to all the other selfish and self-absorbed people. His followers were legion, and their ranks were filled with every horrible type of person imaginable. Racists, misogynists, homophobes, Nazis, plutocrats, authoritarians, and just people filled with generic anger and hatred. All of them were willing to believe the most ill-informed opinions and outlandish conspiracy theories possible if it somehow supported their shitty worldview.
     Marty knew that a lot of them were just ignorant. Ignorant of facts and science, ignorant of politics or how their own government worked, even ignorant of who they were. Most of them seemed almost proud of their ignorance. They saw a chance to lash out at others who to them seemed like know-it-alls; elites who thought they were better than them. They were insecure, and not at all willing to do any work whatsoever to better themselves. It’s easier and more satisfying in the short term to rail against the things that threaten you or hold you back than it is to actually learn and grow.
     That was another thing about humans that Marty detested. They always took the easy way, no matter how it hurt them in the long run. Heaven wasn't too keen on those humans. When they got to the intake desk, Peter would examine their lives and see that they never even bothered to try, and off to hell they went. Not always hell, there were other avenues for redemption for people who weren't purely evil, but the point is that none of the people who simply drifted through life hurting others and not noticing it would ever get into heaven.
     And I know what you’re thinking, but Marty possessed enough self-awareness to realize that he was simply drifting through life(well, afterlife) as well. He knew he was taking the easy way out, but in a herculean feat of self-delusion that would make most humans proud, he saw his circumstance as very different from the people he detested so much. He was simply drifting his way through heaven, where nothing he did really mattered. It didn’t hurt anyone else if he just floated along, trying to get out of doing any real work. There were no real consequences anywhere, for him or for any of the other heavenly beings. There were no consequences for humans as well. He barely had any interaction with them at all, up until now. In his mind, he was nothing like humans, and certainly nothing like Trump or his supporters.
     He had to laugh at the people who followed Trump. The difference between Trump and most of his followers is that Trump was rich and powerful, so most of his horrible behavior never really touched him. The vast majority of his followers were simply hurting themselves. The karma could barely keep up with it. They were metaphorically punching themselves in the face on a daily basis, yet they still couldn’t figure out why their face was swollen and bruised. They ignored all science and health advice during the current pandemic, simply because they saw it as a chance to lash out at their perceived enemies, the people they felt were looking down on them. They were dying by the thousands as they deluded themselves into believing that the aforementioned know-it-alls were lying and perpetrating a hoax for their own means. Never mind that they really had no good theory why health officials and scientists would want to trick the population into believing that a virus was real. Most of them were just filled with paranoia and fear that someone somewhere was trying to get over on them or control them. People were big on not being told what to do, and would do whatever someone told them to achieve their freedom. It left Marty shaking his head.
      Marty also thought it was both amazing and ludicrous how people tried to understand most of the things that other humans did or thought. On one hand, it was definitely the right thing to do to try to understand human behavior, but on the other hand they attached a lot of importance or credit where it didn’t belong.
      For example, a lot of people gave Trump credit for being some evil mastermind or the antichrist. To be an evil genius, you have to not only be evil, but be a genius as well, just like the title implies. Trump was no genius. Not even on some basic level. Not even like he had some idiot savant thing going on where he was a master manipulator who didn’t even recognize his true power. He was just an idiot, and most people who weren’t idiots saw right through it. Enough people who weren’t idiots didn’t see through it as well, that’s true, but Marty thought that part of the problem was just how people defined idiots.
     The successful or wealthy were seen as people who couldn’t possibly be idiots. Doctors and lawyers, people in any profession that carried any sort of clout, were assumed to be immune to being idiotic. That was not the case. Marty saw idiots everywhere, because he had no illusions about people’s status or wealth or profession. He simply saw them as humans, and all humans were basically psychotic apes who leapfrogged their way through evolution and up the food chain. Some of them recognized that it didn’t make them infallible or more important than any other life on the planet, or bigger than the planet itself, but most didn't.
     Most people used heaven and religion to boost the claim that humans were special and different, and it irritated God to no end. People on their own were definitely capable of being special, but as a whole, the human race had a lot of competition. Not just with most of the other animals living on their planet, but with the trillions of other races and species populating the universe. All of them had their own unique and special traits, and all of them had a place in His kingdom. Heaven was not exclusive to humans, and humans had no clue as to just how many versions of paradise existed. Every earthly religion got it wrong on most levels, because religion was invented by humans, and humans were very fallible indeed. As was already pointed out, an awful lot of them were indeed idiots, so most theology and religious dogma was as idiotic as the people who made it up. A lot of them were harmless idiots, but idiots just the same.
     So back to the previous point, Trump was not a genius on any level. Most of his selfish and idiotic behavior was helping him in the short term and not really having much of a karmic impact, but life is a marathon, not a sprint. The Divine Plan definitely seemed like a scattershot mess, but it also usually saw to it that bad behavior had consequences eventually, even if people didn’t always see it. There was an oversight department for what people called karma, even if it wasn’t exactly what people would think it would be. Karma basically took care of itself, but records needed to be kept. There were a few instances along the way where some higher angels had to tweak things now and then, but most of the time it was left to run its natural course. Marty could never figure out just what triggered some heavenly intervention, because some very good people got some very bad breaks, and some very bad people never got their comeuppance. It’s like the karma division was asleep at the wheel most of the time, but Marty supposed that maybe they knew more than he did about the people involved, so he just left it alone.
     Speaking of karma, though, Marty actually thought Trump might be getting off easy, dying before he vacated the White House. He would never have to answer for his crimes. Marty had to keep in mind that ultimately Trump would wind up in hell. No matter how Trump deluded himself into thinking that he would somehow get a pass because of who he was, Marty knew that it didn’t work that way up here. He didn’t even understand how it had dragged on this long. Surely Peter and God knew that Trump was going to go to hell and face eternal torment. Heaven was kind of a bureaucracy though, and every base had to be covered, so Marty resigned himself to it.
     Still, all the trips to earth with Trump didn’t seem to be making much of a difference either way. Trump was not growing or learning, but Peter and the powers that be weren’t any more convinced that Trump should get flung into hell. Marty complained to Peter after nearly every trip down there, after every disastrous attempt at helping people, and Peter just told Marty to keep trying. It was almost like there was no plan whatsoever, as if God and heaven simply wanted to torment Marty.
     Maybe this was about torment, but not about Marty. Maybe this was all just to torment and annoy Trump. Maybe this was hell for Trump. Maybe Marty was going to have to spend eternity dragging Trump around Earth everyday. He shuddered at the thought.
     But no, that wasn’t the case. It couldn’t be. Marty was an angel, and heaven didn’t get involved in torture and retribution. Heaven was about rewards and growth, hell was in charge of all the misery and teaching lessons and such. Nope, this was just bureaucratic nonsense, redundancy and a waste of time.
     Marty laughed when he thought about how it was this type of thing that drove otherwise decent people to vote for someone like Trump in the first place. They had had enough of inefficiency and incompetence in their government. It wasn’t just the government, it was human beings in general. The population had gotten too big to manage. Corporations and organizations and pretty much any large group of people were unmanageable at this point. Everything was corrupted and the systems put in place for oversight was broken, in every aspect. Apathy finished off any chance they had of getting it under control.
     So Marty watched as it all fell apart a little more each day. It was all breaking down. Most people didn’t care about their jobs anymore. The people who did were discouraged to realize that the people who didn’t care at all were getting a free ride. The harder one person worked at their job, the less three other people bothered to do their job at all. Most workplaces were pits of resentment and indifference, full of inequality and out of balance.
      Every institution was riddled with it. Government, businesses, schools, churches, the post office, law enforcement and the armed forces, you name it. Nothing was working like it should, and it was really throwing people off their games.
     Another dichotomy about humans was that as much as they screamed about not letting anyone control them, they actually wanted everything to at least appear like someone was in control at all times. As much as they refused to take personal responsibility for most things, they were more than happy to give up freedom and control if it meant that someone else was going to do it. They hated the government, but it was too much effort to get involved in the process, so they were more than happy to listen to someone like Trump who said he had the answers, so long as they didn’t have to think about what those answers were.
     So they fought even harder against reality whenever anyone came along and pointed out that Trump didn’t actually have any answers. They railed against anything that threatened to expose the fact that there were no real solutions being offered. They talked themselves into believing whatever they had to if it convinced them that things were getting better and they didn’t have to do any actual work. They would believe any garbage at all if it meant they could just go on in blissful ignorance.
     The thing was, no one was happier. Nothing had changed. In fact, all the things they hated about government and the system had only gotten much worse. Somehow they managed to ignore that fact, as it all crumbled around them.
     Yeah, people were idiots, Marty was sure of it. Yet when he went down to Earth with Trump, he still found himself finding good things about them, and having sympathy for them. It was odd. The more Trump had to interact with other people, the more contempt for them he seemed to have. It was the opposite of the way Marty was feeling. He even mentioned it to Peter a few days ago.
     “Yeah, they grow on you.” Peter told him.
     “They really do,” agreed Marty. “I’m not sure what it is. Some of them are very kind. In fact, I’ve really only been interacting with people in the worst and most dire circumstances, but even with all those reasons to be angry and bitter, they are really decent. They are still kind and good.”
     “It’s the damnedest thing, isn’t it?” Peter responded, smiling. “They are really surprising at times. They are pretty complex. I have to admit, I don’t completely understand them.”
     “Wait a minute,” Marty said, taken aback, “isn’t it your job to judge them? To take stock of their entire lives and all their actions? Of all beings in the universe, shouldn’t you understand them better than anyone?”
     “Shhhh,” Peter replied, “It’s best not to think about that!”
     “But how is that fair?” Marty protested.
     “Shhh,” Peter repeated, and winked at him. “It all works out, I’m sure.”
     While that conversation had bothered Marty a bit, he supposed that Peter relied a lot on his instincts. Maybe Peter was imbued with some power and understanding that even he himself didn’t understand. Maybe She in her infinite wisdom had given Peter some gift that even he couldn’t comprehend, and by not thinking about it too much it allowed the power to flow through him. Of course, maybe it was all bullshit and blind luck. Who would know the difference, and who would even be able to say anything about it?
     Marty shook this whole train of thought out of his head. The fact remained that he had to do something if this whole Trump fiasco was ever going to end, so maybe he had to go over Peter’s head. If Peter didn’t even seem to know exactly what he was doing, why was he wasting time spinning his wheels simply because Peter said it had to be so? No, tomorrow he would take some initiative on his own. Isn’t that what Peter always told him to do anyway?

     In the weeks after Kim’s diagnosis and recovered memories of what had transpired with Marty and Trump, she had changed. She was more determined than ever, about everything. She had decided that as long as she wasn’t working, she was going back to school. She took her son’s no good father to court, and got child support. She wasn’t sure how long this pandemic was going to last, but she decided that she was going to come out at the other end of it better off than when she went in.
     She was also determined to find out just what had happened that night when a dead president and a useless angel named Marty visited her. She tried talking to her pastor about it, but he looked at her like she was nuts when she told him about Trump and an angel showing up in her living room. She couldn’t say she blamed him, although she thought it was strange that someone who devoted their lives to God would dismiss an actual visitation so quickly. “Oh well, belief is subjective” she figured.
     So she lit candles and prayed, hoping the heavens would tell her what was going on, or that Marty would come back and explain himself. The heavens remained silent, and Marty didn’t show. It was frustrating knowing that there was something bigger than life here on Earth, but she couldn’t seem to access any of it. She had stood in the same room as an angel, yet still could make no connection to any of it.
     If she had taken away one thing from that night with Marty and Trump, it was that no matter what might be going on with heaven and the afterlife, she was going to have to take care of shit down here herself. Angels and ghosts were no help at all. They had no interest in fixing things for humans, that was up to them.
     After a couple of months, she was no closer to heaven though, but even though part of her wanted to just let it go, she couldn’t. She was at the point where she was scouring the corners of the internet, looking for any kind of ritual or prayer that might put her in touch with Marty. She even tried praying directly to him. Who knows, maybe he was Saint Marty, the patron saint of ineptitude.
     Despite all her research and desperation, Kim knew next to nothing how these things worked. For all she knew, heaven was indifferent to life on Earth. It surely felt that way. She would be surprised to know that every second of every life was observed and cataloged, and even more surprised to find that it was observed and cataloged by beings without much ability to understand what they were watching at all. Then all those infinite moments were filtered through those beings, and some of it passed through to other beings, and even though they only had a little more comprehension about it, it got filtered even further. So on it went, and once in a while, some important stuff got through to the right department, and it did make a difference.
     But not often. In fact, hardly ever. The human beings weren’t the only ones working with a broken system. All the odds were against any of Kim’s pleadings ever getting through. Besides all the red tape and inefficiency, I already pointed out that time moves differently on Earth than it did in the afterlife. Only a few weeks had passed for Marty, even though three months had gone by for Kim. The time difference alone made it hard to connect.
     Still, on this night on Earth, Kim once again sat in her living room after Jaden had been put to bed. She lit a candle that she pestered the pastor into blessing at church this past Sunday, and poured some holy water out into a bowl with some scriptures written on the side. She closed her eyes, and prayed with all her might to God and Jesus above, and even to Marty, the dopey angel she had met months earlier. A little while later, she stood up, blew out the candle, and poured the holy water down the drain. One more night where nothing happened at all.

     In what could best be described as Marty’s room in heaven, as he was plotting his next course of action on what to do with Trump, and just exactly how he was going to take his initiative, he was suddenly startled.
     He looked around the room and said “Did somebody call me?”
     But no one was there.  He was alone.

Trump In The Afterlife: chapter 5 Kim

     If Marty was going to get anywhere with Trump, he was going to have to put a little effort in. He just wanted it to be over, but he was going to have to do the work this time. He waved his hand, and the wall of people appeared again. Maybe it would help to have some input from Trump, and see if they could manage a plan before he just threw him into something.
     “Okay,” Marty said, “let’s take a look at some people and see if we can’t find something that might match up with your strengths.”
     “Everything is a strength for me,” Trump told him. “I’ve never failed at anything.”
     “How can you believe that?” Marty asked. “You’ve failed at almost everything you’ve ever done.”
     “Hardly!” Trump replied, looking incredulous. “I’m rich, I’m famous, and I’m the president!”
     “Former presi…”
     “Whatever, but I was the president,” admitted Trump, “and I was one of the greatest presidents ever.”
     “Look, you obviously believe that,” Marty said wearily, “so I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise. I guess you just tune out reality and think whatever you want, and somehow that works for you. This time you’re going to have to pay attention if you want to get through this. If I’m going to get through this.”
     “What do you mean if you're going to get through this?" Trump asked. " This isn't about you, it's about me."
     “I’m stuck with you until you either get this right or I give you enough rope to hang yourself,” Marty said. “We need to get serious and you really need to help some people.”
     "Not interested,” Trump said simply. “I told you that.”
     “Well, this isn’t going to fix itself,” Marty tried to explain. “This problem isn’t just going to go away; you need to work at it.”
     “Really?” Trump replied. “Because I’ve found that if I just ignore stuff that I don’t want to do, someone will take care or it, or eventually just give up.”
     “Is that true?”
     “Of course!” Trump said happily. “That’s probably why I made such a great politician. They’re great at ignoring shit and doing nothing!”
     “Well, we're not going to do that, at least not anymore.” Marty said, with what he hoped was purpose in his voice. The sad thing was, he was a lot like Trump, and apparently most politicians, in the sense that he often ignored his problems and responsibilities as well. There was always someone else to pick up the slack, and if something never got done, well, Divine Plan. It must not have been that important a part of the plan after all if She didn't make sure it got done.
     Now it seemed to Marty that it might not have been the best course of action all the time to just shirk his duty. Perhaps his attitude had been wrong all these years, at least to some degree. It wasn’t like he wanted to go out and find more work, but maybe he could put just a little effort into his life. If nothing else, he wanted to put whatever effort it took now to just get it over with, and that was enough motivation to get moving.
     “Okay,” he was saying to Trump now, “let’s take a look at what’s going on down there, and see who you think you could help.”
     With Carl, he had simply pulled up the wall and looked for the most miserable person he could find. It wasn’t hard, most people looked miserable most of the time. Who could blame them? The world was a mess, and had been for a long time. He actually had to give Trump some perverse credit, because he never thought anyone could make matters worse. He was kind of an idiot savant in that area. Or perhaps just an idiot, but whatever he was he came along and set humanity back farther than almost anyone in history. That was saying a lot, because besides all the monsters everyone is aware of throughout history, there were plenty of others that had simply been lost to time.
     There was a ruler back in the early Aztec civilization before they had any way of recording history who actually ate babies. There was an Asian tribal leader who demanded his subjects routinely cut one of their fingers off every solstice, and couldn’t figure out why industry collapsed and everyone starved as people tried to farm and make pots with nothing but stumps.
     There was the bizarre early Germanic leader who just liked sticking things in people’s asses. He would have his court artisans carve intricate and beautiful figures, only to have them inserted into the rear ends of his subjects. Marty laughed whenever archeologists found the remains of one of them, with the figurines, and assumed that they were sacred ritual objects buried with them. They had some of these items encased in displays in museums. If they only knew that they had been shoved up people’s butts a week before they died of sepsis.
     People were weird and horrible, and most of them weren’t truly evil, they were just fucked up. Trump was a rare combination of all of that. Marty wondered why God would even allow someone like him to exist. He thought that maybe it was just some big, demented experiment to see just how messed up people could get. If that were the case, Marty was pretty sure He could have just stopped at the ass guy, but apparently God had a much higher tolerance for depravity and cruelty than him.
     Now Marty was looking over the screen, trying to find someone for Trump to help. He pointed to a person in one of the little squares in the screen. They seemed distraught over something, and they were alone, drinking in their apartment in the middle of the day.
     “How about this one?” He asked Trump, gesturing towards the person in question.
     “Really?” Trump answered, looking almost insulted.
     “Yeah, why not?”
     “I mean, he’s black,” Trump explained. “I don’t really want to help black people.”
     Marty stared at him in disgust for a moment, but then composed himself. There was no use explaining why that was wrong because he had come to realize that Trump wasn’t capable of changing his mind. Arguing or pointing out facts or reasons didn’t make a difference. It just frustrated them both, and wasted time. This is who he was.
     “Okay, so you’re not even willing to help black people?” Marty asked.
     “That’s right,” confirmed Trump. “Never liked them. Even the famous or useful ones. I mean, it’s nothing personal, they just aren’t white. You know, normal.”
     “Alright,” Marty said, trying not to think about it, “no black people.”
     “Or Mexicans, obviously,” added Trump. “I spent my presidency trying to stop them, I’m certainly not going to help them sell drugs or rape people now.”
     “Okay …”
     “Or Muslims. I’m not going to help terrorists. Or the Chinese. They sabotaged my whole presidency with that Kung flu.”
     “Do you realize how offensive that is?” Marty finally said.
     “What, Kung flu?”
     “All of it!” Marty was trying to keep it together, but it was hard. Again he found himself caring about things that he shouldn’t. It wasn’t like Trump was the only racist human. A good portion of them were blatant and horrible racists, full of hate and poison. Then there were the rest of them. They all had some racist stuff going on, even if they did their best not to give in to it. That was another cruel joke God played on his creation, making so many races and making them look just different enough that it made people act like maniacs. Even some of the most tolerant and woke humans still couldn’t escape it. It was hard wired into them.
     God had made all the angels essentially the same. They seemed to encompass all aspects of mankind in their appearance, so there was no real reason to feel segregated or different. Angels were angels, and while some were more beautiful than others, none of them were ugly or unpleasant to look at.
     Nor were humans. So many of them held themselves up to arbitrary ideals of beauty, which changed constantly. The thing humans never seemed to get in their lifetimes anyway was that the meat golems they inhabited didn’t count for much. Yes, some of them looked better than others, depending on the trends at the time, but it was their souls that mattered. Some extra weight or slightly asymmetrical features was not nearly as big a thing as an ugly soul.
     People could sort of see them too, they just weren’t aware of it most of the time. The ability to see each other’s souls clearly had been lost over time, starting as soon as they left the garden. On one level, they were completely oblivious to the fact that they had to maintain and beautify their souls, yet they were still vaguely aware of souls on a subconscious level. No wonder they rarely felt at ease with each other. They often had no clue why they were drawn to someone or distrusted them vehemently. They were affected by something they could never get more than a glimpse of, yet it had a profound impact on everything.
     “Okay,” Marty finally said, “Let’s find some white person for you to help.”
     Marty scanned the screen, and finally settled on someone.
     “Okay, what about this guy?” Marty asked.
     “Him?” Trump said, pointing to the person Marty was indicating. “I can’t even understand what he’s saying.”
     “He’s speaking French,” Marty explained. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it so you can understand him when we get there.”
     “I’m not helping any French people, either,” Trump said. What is so hard about finding me some normal person to help?”
     “And by normal, you mean …” Marty floundered.
     “White and American!” Trump exclaimed. “Why is this so difficult?”
     Marty realized that there was no way out of this.
     “Okay, we’ll do it your way.”
     Marty scanned the screen again, and this time when he located someone that fit Trump’s narrow requirements, he simply waved his hand and they were on their way there. He wasn’t going to give Trump a chance to shoot another one down.
     They appeared in the living room of a small apartment. A woman was sitting on the couch, rocking her baby, who was fussing and had obviously been crying just seconds earlier. She was now soothing him, and he was settling down.
     “I know you’re hungry, baby,” she was saying. “Tomorrow I’ll be able to get you some more food, as soon as they put more money on my EBT card.”
     Trump and Marty were still invisible to her. Trump looked around the apartment, and Marty could see the look of disgust on his face.
     “Okay, focus,” Marty told him, “you’re not here to critique the living space.”
     “Speaking of focus,” Trump said, “where’s that little naked guy with the drugs?”
     “You’ve had enough Adderall for now.”
     “Apparently not,” Trump contradicted. “I’m asking for it, aren’t I?”
     Marty ignored it and pushed forward.
     “Okay, this is Kim, and she’s worried because she doesn’t have enough food for her or her baby. She has no money, and she’s all alone. She’s frightened.”
     “Yeah …” Trump started to say, but just let it hang there.
     “What’s wrong now?” Marty asked, perturbed. “She’s white, she’s American.”
     “Yeah, but she’s a woman.”
     “So?”
     “So,” Trump said, “It’s hard to relate to woman problems. It’s hard to relate to women, period. I mean, they’re women. I have a hard time caring about them, to be honest.”
     “Once again,” Marty said, “I have to say that’s horrible. I mean really horrible. Why are you so horrible?”
     “I’m not horrible!” Trump protested. “Why do you keep saying that? If anything, I’m just honest.”
     “You’re only honest about the worst things,” Marty replied. “You lie about everything else.”
     “Eh, I’ll give you that one. See, honest!”
     “Okay,” Marty sighed, “Just help her!”
     With that, he waved his hand, and Trump materialized before her. Kim froze in apprehension and terror at the sight of the recently deceased man standing before her.
     “Oh my God, what’s happening?” She cried.
     “I know, right?” Trump told her. “It’s cool, isn't it? The President of the United States, right here in your living room!”
     “Didn’t you lose the election?” She asked, momentarily forgetting her shock.
     “Okay, whatever!” Yelled Trump. “Does everybody have to fucking remind me?”
     Kim was standing now, and tried backing away from the apparition, only to feel the couch behind her knees blocking her. Trump noticed, and tried to calm her.
     “Alright, calm down, everything is okay,” he told her. “I’m here to help.”
     “Help me how?” Asked Kim suspiciously.
     "Well …” Trump trailed off. “I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out. Now what seems to be the problem?”
     “The problem is that I have no money and no food and I’m about to get kicked out of my apartment any day.” She started to cry.
     “Okay, well, maybe we can …” He trailed off again.
     “We can what? My baby is hungry.”
     “Can’t you just, you know …”
     “Can’t I just what?” She demanded.
     Marty could tell that she was already exasperated with Trump. He noticed that female humans often seemed exasperated when they were talking to the males of the species.
     “You know,” Trump repeated, “Breast feed it?”
     Kim started crying again. She sat down on the couch, and her baby started crying too.
     “No, that’s not an option,” she said. She said it very matter of factly, without much emotion, like just thinking about had knocked the wind out of her.
     “Well, why not?” Trump persisted. “You’re a woman, you have tits, use them!”
     Marty froze in shock, and Kim recoiled in horror. She started crying harder.
     “I’m getting chemo for cancer, I can’t breastfeed.” She spat out, and now she was sobbing and her baby was wailing.
     “Oh,” offered Trump meekly. “That would explain the whole bald thing.”
     “Yeah, it would.” Kim was furious and exhausted. Marty could tell that this wasn’t the first time she had to deal with someone like Trump.
     “Yeah,” Trump said, “FYI it’s not a great look.”
     Kim stopped crying and just stared at him in disbelief. Marty knew the look, he had it plastered on his own face most of the time he interacted with Trump as well. This was going even worse than it had with Carl. Her son was still crying unabated, and she went back to trying to soothe him again.
     “Yeah, could you shut him up while I’m trying to think here?” Trump asked her. “It’s really annoying.”
     “Oh my God, you are so horrible!” Kim yelled. “Why did I vote for you?”
     “You voted for me?” Trump perked up. “I shouldn’t be surprised, I mean I won the election. They stole it from me.”
     “Oh shut up with that nonsense. You lost! It’s no wonder, you are such a horrorshow!”
     “If I’m so horrible, why did you vote for me?” Trump asked smugly.
     “Because my pastor told us to. I didn’t really like anything about you, but he said you would save innocent babies, and that would be enough.”
     “So you still voted for me, even though you didn’t like anything else about me?” Trump asked, seeming truly shocked. “You voted for a man you thought was horrible? Why?”
     “Honestly, I guess because I just expect men to be horrible. You seemed like most men I've met in my life. Like my father, who was never there and used to hit my mom all the time before he left her for someone else. Like my uncle, who raped me when I was fourteen. Like Jaden’s father, who knocked me up, and left when he found out I was sick. Now I’m on my own, with no help, on welfare and medicaid; programs that you wanted to kill.”
     “Did I?” asked Trump. “I mean, it's possible, I say a lot of stuff. I really don’t know much about any of it, but other republicans told me that it was a bunch of poor and lazy people mooching anyway. They just don’t want to work.”
     “Do I look lazy?!” Kim shouted. “Do I look like I’m trying to game the system?”
     “Well,” said Trump, “if you weren’t bald, I might believe it. I can’t imagine that you would do that to yourself. Have I told you how bad it makes you look? Women should have long hair.”
     “Yeah, I heard you the first time.” Kim just glared at him.
     "I mean, at first I just thought you were a lesbian," Trump continued. "Not a hot lesbian, like in porno, but one of those angry, mannish looking ones."
     "Really?" Kim asked him. "And do you see a lot of bald lesbians?"
     "Well, maybe not bald," Trump said, actually pondering the question. "I guess they had crew cuts or something. Very unattractive though, and I know attractive. I used to own beauty pageants, you know."
     "Yeah, I know." Kim had had enough, and even Trump could sense it.
     "Okay, let me think," he said.
     Trump actually seemed to be considering the situation now.
     “If I was still alive, I could just do one of those executive orders to help you.” He was saying now. “I mean, maybe. Sometimes they worked, but sometimes they were just things I did to shut people up. Speaking of shutting up, Jared there is finally being quiet.”
     “Jaden, not Jared.”
     “Whatever, I’m just glad he stopped crying. It’s really grating.”
     “So can you actually do anything for us at all?” Kim asked
     “Probably not,” Trump admitted. “This whole thing they got me doing is really dumb. I have to constantly come down here and try to help losers who don’t even listen to what I have to say. It’s exhausting.”
     Kim let the “losers” remark go, and pressed on.
     “So no advice or words of encouragement? You were president, isn’t there anything you can think of that I might have overlooked, any government plans or services that could help me?
     “Yeah, I thought I already made it pretty clear I don’t really know anything about government or helping people.” He thought some more. “You know, I knew a lot of women who made money by having sex with men. You should probably get a wig or something if you’re going to try that, though.”
     “Your advice is that I should become a hooker?”
     “Well, when you say it like that, it sounds bad,” Trump explained, “but you should go with your best chance at making money, and men like to have sex with women. They'll gladly pay for it. It’s a no-brainer.”
     “Okay, how do I get rid of you? Do I burn sage or get holy water or something?”
     Marty was mortified through all this. He saw once again that Trump wasn’t fit to talk to anyone, especially people in crisis. He would have made a great crisis negotiator, if the goal was to get people to jump as quickly as possible. He materialized in the room, ready to apologize to Kim.
     “Hang on, Marty,” Trump said, seeing him appear. “There has to be something you can do for this woman.”
     “You mean you actually give a shit?” Marty asked, surprised. He glanced over at Kim, who was now staring at him, her mouth agape.
     “Oh, hi,” Marty said to her. “I’m an angel, name’s Marty, nice to meet you. I’m sorry about all this. He’s just terrible, isn’t he?”
     “He really is,” Kim agreed. “So you’re an angel? Heaven’s real?”
     “Yep!” Marty confirmed. “Don’t tell anyone. It’s supposed to be about blind faith and all.”
     “So can you help me? Or ask God to help me?”
     “Sorry,” Marty said, “It doesn’t work that way.”
     “Well that’s not fair,” Kim said.
     “It’s really not,” Marty agreed. “But I mean, this monstrosity was rich and got to be president, so why would anyone think anything is fair.”
     “That’s depressing,” said Kim. “Why should this piece of shit get rewarded?”
     “I’m standing right here!” Interjected Trump.
     “Yeah, we know,” Marty said. “You really screwed the pooch again here.”
     “Wait a minute,” Trump said. “You mean no one is going to help her? That’s not right.”
     Marty was taken aback. He found himself liking Kim as well. There was something about her. She seemed smart and brave, and in spite of the fact that she was crying and somewhat horrified about the whole crazy situation, there was just something so likable about her.
     “I'm still in shock that you actually care,” he told Trump, astonished.
     “Well, yeah. I mean, she’s gonna die, and what’s gonna happen to little Jamie?”
     “Jaden!” Kim and Marty both shouted.
     “Wait a minute,” Kim said. “I didn’t say I was going to die.”
     “Well, you have cancer,” Trump said, “sooo…”
     “So there’s still hope, right?” Kim looked imploringly at Marty.
     Marty knew the future. He knew that Kim was not going to make it. In truth, it was one of the reasons he chose her. He knew that no matter what, she only had a limited time left, so he figured that Trump couldn’t screw things up too badly.
     “Well,” Marty was now telling her, “with God, all things are possible.”
     “That doesn’t sound very encouraging,” Kim said. It started to sink in, and suddenly the fear felt very real. “Oh my God, I’m going to die!”
     “Wait a minute,” Trump interrupted. “You knew she was going to die anyway? There was nothing I could have done? You set me up!”
     “No I didn’t!” said Marty. “I just figured that whatever you did here, you know, no harm no foul.”
     “What the fuck?” yelled Kim. “You’re an angel, and you’re just as horrible as he is! Both of you get out of here!”
     “Okay, calm down,” Marty told her. “I’m going to clear your memory, you won’t even have any recollection that this even happened. I’m really sorry about everything.”
     “Yeah, fuck you, too.” Kim said, crying again. Jaden was crying as well now. This had been a complete disaster. He waved his hand and Kim’s mind went blank, and Marty and Trump were gone.
     Later on, Marty was thinking about what had happened, he had to admit, he was shocked that Trump actually seemed to have a slight bit of empathy. Of course, Marty had to bury his feelings and remain neutral, but that was different. It was a professional thing. He still felt bad about Kim’s situation. He really liked her in a way he had never liked another human before. Maybe this is what Peter had been on about the other day. He was now thinking about how he didn’t like the detachment he had taught himself so he could deal with these humans. Well, things had worked out with Carl, so maybe Kim would be alright.
     Marty winced when he remembered that she wasn’t going to be alright. This wasn't like it was with Carl. There were no other options, no loving spouse to prop her up. He had seen the future, and the Divine Plan didn’t allow for changes. What was going to be was going to be. In another week, the doctor was going to look at her test results and tell her that the chemo wasn't working, and that she only had a few months to live. He decided that he would brush it off, and not let it get to him. Marty knew how things worked around here. Heaven seemed indifferent to anyone's suffering at best, and more often just seemed viciously cruel. Maybe when Kim died, he would be there to meet her, and tell her how sorry he was, and try to make it up to her.

     Time passes differently in heaven, and while Marty was busy thinking about what had just occurred, it was already a week later on earth, and Kim was sitting in her doctor’s office while he talked to her about her test results.
     “Well, Kim,” he said, “I have to admit, I didn’t really expect good news, but these tests …”
     “Yes?” Kim asked nervously, “what is it?”
     “You’re 100% cancer free. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
     “Wait, what?” Kim asked, “Really?”
     “Really!” The doctor confirmed. “It looks like you’re going to have a long and happy life.”
     Kim’s world went swimmy, and she started to laugh. She couldn’t believe it, after the operation and weeks of chemo, she had a bad feeling about all of it. Especially the last week or so, she was sure that she was not going to make it. Sure, her life was hard, but she still got to live, and now it didn’t seem quite so terrible.
     She thanked the doctor, and headed out to her car. She was about to get in, when suddenly, it was like a bright light, almost electric, flashed in her brain, and instantly she remembered everything: Marty the angel and Trump in her apartment, that they said she was going to die. When she got over the initial shock, she smiled to think that even heaven had underestimated her.

     Peter sat at his desk, watching all of this transpire, and thought to himself “now that was odd. Very odd indeed…”

Trump In The Afterlife: Chapter 4 A Bit About Humanity

     The next morning, Marty woke up early and stopped by to talk to Peter. It is probably not important, but it is still worth pointing out that there was no night or morning in heaven. Time works much differently there. Time is a human concept, at least in the form of 24 hour days and minutes and seconds. In truth, multiple versions of many events happen simultaneously, while the actual time between seconds on earth can stretch out for eons in heaven, depending on what’s needed. It’s all very confusing, and that’s why when people arrive in the afterlife, things like daytime and nighttime, sleep schedules and other stuff like it are maintained for their benefit. It takes time for the human mind to adjust to the fact that many of the things they took for granted are not even needed anymore.
     Sleep was not one of those. Human souls never adapt that much. Even in the afterlife, people slept. The angels quickly learned that not sleeping drove humans crazy. In fact, people got to sleep in hell as well, otherwise they soon deteriorated to the point that eternal suffering was losing a lot of its effectiveness. Granted, they never got a good night’s sleep in hell. Their beds always felt too hard or too soft, it was always just a little too hot or cold, and they felt like they had to pee constantly. In heaven, none of that was a problem. You fell right to sleep and slept soundly in the perfect temperature all night. That alone was reason enough to try to live a good life. Marty often thought that if Jesus had mentioned that little perk, mankind would have been much nicer throughout history.
     Angels slept as well. It wasn’t that they needed to do it, it was just that God designed it that way so that they wouldn’t be bored silly or lose their minds. Like humans, they just needed a break. Being forced to be conscious every moment of your life is no good for anyone or anything. It overwhelms you. Only a few angels never slept, and they were the head angels; God’s favorites, and those with a lot of power and decision making clearance, like Peter.
     The truth is, heaven or not, Marty didn’t sleep well at all the night before. He dreamt of Carl, and woke up several times, worrying just how he was making out. He finally gave up on sleep and headed over to the front desk.
     “Did you see that shitshow yesterday?” He was asking Peter now.
     “You know I did,” Peter replied. “It was horrible.”
     “And that doesn’t tell you enough? You can’t just send him to hell based on that and get it over with?”
     “It doesn’t work that way.” Peter explained. “You know that, yet you keep asking. Just accept your job and get on with it.”
     “But it’s pointless!” Marty protested. “He’s irredeemable. He’s not going to learn or change.”
     “You better not let Jesus hear you talking like that,” Chided Peter. “I mean, redemption is kind of a big part of his whole deal.”
     “Yeah, but even he couldn’t save everybody. You had to want him to, and you had to accept him and all that.”
     “So now you know how Jesus works?” Peter shot back. “You were there, did you ever hear him say that?”
     “I don’t remember,” admitted Marty. “I think it’s in the bible, though. Somewhere. Isn’t it?”
     “Well, you know there’s a bunch of stuff in that book that doesn’t even belong there,” Peter said.       "There are so many different versions at this point, and it’s lost so much in translation. Not to mention that a lot of it is shit that people just made up.”
     Peter chuckled a little at his own words. He tried not to let it sound condescending, but it was hard when he was nearly as all-knowing as God at this point. He understood things on such a different level than most beings, and definitely more than Marty. Marty had such potential, though. He just had a lot to learn, and it was stuff that you can’t really teach; it came with experience. Unfortunately, Marty didn’t seem to want to experience things. He just wanted to skate through time, doing as little work as possible. He thought that Marty deserved better for himself, so he wasn’t going to give up on him just yet.
     Besides, he genuinely liked Marty. He reminded him of humans in some ways, and that was rare. Most angels had lost their humanity. More accurately, they never possessed it in the first place. They weren’t human, they were heavenly beings, created long before human beings even existed. Still, God made both angels and humans somewhat in Its own image, which is possible because God was a multitude of things, made up of more elements and possessing so many facets that it gave even Peter a headache when he tried to comprehend it.
     Which might be why all the beings he created seemed so disjointed at times, and felt pulled in so many directions at once. Perhaps that’s why people were dichotomies unto themselves. They were too complex because they were made up of all different traits of an immortal and omnipresent being that they had no hope of understanding. It’s hard to find peace when every part of you feels at odds with the rest of you.
     Peter liked people as well. There is some confusion about Peter, as most people think of him as Saint Peter, who once walked the earth as a human. He was not. He was an angel, created at the dawn of time like all true angels; he just happened to share a name with an apostle. He kind of bristled when people thought of him as that Peter when they arrived here. Saint Peter had been kind of a mess. He wound up denying his lord when push came to shove, and the Catholics didn’t do him any favors. When Jesus said that he was the rock upon which he would build his church, he didn’t mean it so literally. Still, the overzealous and literal christian extremists went out and found a rock they claimed Saint Peter was buried under, and built a church on it, and named the church Peter as well, for good measure. So yeah, he liked humans, but they could be really weird at times.
      And as much as he liked them, he had to keep his relationship with them from becoming personal. He had to maintain professional detachment, although it was hard sometimes. It didn’t used to be. Back in the beginning, he didn’t have much problem with it, but now that he had become more familiar with humans, interacting with them for millennia and all that, he saw that it wasn’t always their fault. He saw that many of them didn’t even have a chance. They were born into situations they had no chance of rising above. They were victimized and left behind by everyone and everything that was supposed to protect them and nurture them. Some of them were sick, and didn’t know any better. How was he going to judge people whose own body chemistry and the electric flashes in their brains sabotaged them at every point?
     So he shook all that off and did his job, at least for the most part. He knew that some of them were evil and just plain horrible. Irredeemable, as Marty had said. Still, it seemed that a lot was up to his discretion. He had learned that he could fudge the rules here and there, and since he was apparently allowed to do it, it must be part of His Divine Plan. Of course, Peter knew that wasn’t really proof of anything. That was more like Marty’s logic, but he seemed to have a point.
     Sometimes Peter thought that part of the whole Divine Plan and free choice was that beings could change and grow, and it was figured into the equation. It was self-correcting, and maybe that meant that he was in charge of the correcting part of that, just another cog in the machine. For whatever reason, growth and change happened, and that was part of the whole point of existence, wasn’t it? If not, why even bother with existence at all?
     All of which meant that Marty was capable of growth and change as well. And if not, at least he was amusing and helped pass the time. Peter didn’t sleep, and God knows he needed something to help pass the monotony of living his life wide awake at all times. The day in, day out tedium he experienced was like nothing Marty could ever comprehend. Even now, he existed in many dimensions simultaneously. Beings were dying every second, and not just on earth. He was occupied every moment, in an infinite number of realities, and conscious of every single one. It was a lot to handle.
     “I don’t think any of it really matters at all,” Marty was saying now. “It’s all been planned out, and one stupid human in the history of civilization isn’t going to matter very much, right?”
     “Well,” said Peter, “He sees every sparrow …”
     “Does He, though?” Marty interrupted. “Does He really? Because He might see them, but He doesn’t seem to want to help them or save them or make their lives any better, does He? I mean, what’s the point of spending eternity obsessively staring at birds if you’re not going to do anything about it?”
     “Who say He doesn’t?” Asked Peter.
     “Don’t play that game with me,” Marty laughed. “I’m not some wide-eyed, recently deceased Southern Baptist housewife showing up here. I know the whole “He works in mysterious ways” routine.””
     “Sorry, force of habit,” admitted Peter. “Still, who are you to question His ways?”
     “Show me where it says that I can’t,” Marty said. “I mean, if something makes no sense, I should be allowed to call it out.”
     “Makes no sense on your level of understanding,” Peter reminded him.
     “Yeah, okay, but if you spent your life watching birds fall, wouldn’t you be tempted to help them out at least once or twice? At some point, it’s psychotic. I mean, even Trump would help a puppy if he saw it suffering.”
    “Are you sure about that?” Asked Peter.
    “Okay, bad example,” admitted Marty
    “I guess we could try an experiment,” Peter said.
    “No, I don’t think we need to …”
    “Yes, send him down to help some poor dying puppy,” Peter continued
    Marty thought about how much the whole Carl incident bummed him out, and shuddered to think about what having Trump try to save a puppy would be like.
     “No puppies!” He practically shouted at Peter. Peter laughed and relented.
     “No, I wouldn’t take that chance either,” he told Marty. “But you are going to have to take him back down and try again.”
     “Yeah, I know.” Marty knew this was going to be the outcome all along. He was just blowing off steam. He sighed, not in the usual way he had been sighing regularly since Trump arrived, but in a deep, exasperated way that comes with existential dread.
     “What’s bothering you, Marty?” Peter was asking him now, genuinely interested. As interested as he could be, because in another dimension he was currently handling an influx of victims from a genocide on the other side of the galaxy.
     “I keep thinking about that Carl guy,” Marty said. “I wonder if he’s going to make it.”
     “One thing you have to learn is that humans are very tough and resilient,” Peter explained. “They can really surprise you sometimes with their tenacity and cleverness.”
     Marty never quite noticed until now that Peter really seemed to have a soft spot for human beings. He joked about it with him occasionally, but he never seriously believed that Peter actually cared.
    “I don’t believe it,” he exclaimed. “You actually care about all those little cretins down there, don’t you?” He laughed at the thought of it. Instead of being embarrassed, Peter sat there considering it.
     “Yes,” he finally admitted, “I guess I do. You don’t spend an eternity watching and judging them without gaining a little admiration.”
    “Well,” said Marty, “I hope I never get that pathetic.”
     “Oh, no?” Peter replied. “Want to take a little peek at how Carl is doing?”
     Marty glared at him. That wasn’t fair. It was too fresh. Besides, Carl was just one person, and he had been there and seen how sad he was, and how Trump had destroyed him. Then again, Carl wouldn’t remember any of that, so maybe it wasn’t so bad. Then he thought about how they had found him, his head in his hands, on the verge of tears, as hopeless as he had ever seen anyone.
     “Well,” he said to Peter, “You weren’t there.”
     “I kind of was.”
     “You were watching from a distance,” Marty corrected him. “You weren’t in that room, watching that guy fall apart.”
     “True enough,” Peter conceded. “Would you like to take a look at him now?”
     Marty sighed. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to, and saying yes meant admitting to Peter that he did care, at least a little, but his curiosity got the better of him.
     “Okay,” he relented. “Pull him up.”
     Peter waved his hand, and in front of them, Carl appeared on a screen. He was home now, in his kitchen, eating dinner with his family. His daughter was telling him all about her day of virtual learning, and his son was interrupting with his own story about a video game he had been playing earlier.
     Carl seemed okay. His wife was there, listening intently to the two competing stories as well. She looked at her husband, and they smiled at each other.
     Soon dinner was over, and the kids went into the family room to watch TV, and Carl and his wife started cleaning up.
     “What are our options here?” She asked him.
     “I really don’t know,” Carl replied. “I’m going to talk to the accountant tomorrow, he thinks he has some ideas. I have a call in to our lawyer as well.”
     “Worse comes to worse, the business folds and we both go back to work,” his wife told him.
     “Yeah, I guess …” Carl’s face looked troubled again.
     “Hey,” his wife was telling him now. “Whatever comes, we’ll get through it together. I love you.”
     “I love you too,” Carl told her. “You’re right, and I don’t want to think about it anymore tonight. Let’s just be thankful for what we have and count our blessings.”
     “Exactly,” his wife said, “and besides, at least Trump is dead!”
     Carl and Marty both laughed at that, and both of them felt better. For a moment, when Carl heard Trump’s name, it almost sparked a memory, but it was gone as quickly as it came.
     “You see?” Peter said. “Resilient!” He almost looked proud.
     “Okay, you win. I’ll try again,” Marty said.
     “That’s the spirit!” Peter clapped him on the back. “It will be better this time, wait and see.”
     “Do you really believe that?” Marty asked.
     “Oh, what does it matter what I believe?” Peter replied. “Bye!”
    In a flash Marty was sitting back in the room with Trump on the couch, looking annoyed as usual.
    “Now what are we doing?” Trump asked, already sounding exasperated.
    “I don’t know,” replied Marty, smiling. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
     The wall turned into a screen again, and Marty started to look it over for the next situation to plop the living monkey wrench named Trump into.

Trump In The Afterlife Chapter 3: Reentry

     Being an angel bestowed upon Marty certain powers and gifts not readily accessible to man. He had a mostly direct conduit to God and the heavens, and access to an understanding of the very fabric of the universe. At least to some degree. He could see things that humans could never comprehend. He could manipulate physics, and even time, but only in a very rudimentary way, and only with supervision. The angels who were higher up in management, and even some demons from hell, had a lot more free reign.
     To Marty's way of thinking, it wasn’t really free reign though. It was simply more responsibility, and although God was a mystery to him as well, he knew enough about the Almighty to know that It was pretty happy being the Almighty. There was still oversight, and God was not going to let anything mess up His whole master plan. If indeed it was a master plan. Sometimes Marty would witness some stuff where in the end, God seemed to just claim it was part of some grand scheme, the equivalent of saying “I meant to do that!” when you trip over the rug.
     Marty never really cared enough about any of it, and certainly never cared about mankind, or the other billions of types of beings that populated the universe. He had seen enough scenarios like the one he was in the middle of now play out in the past. It might seem like it was some cosmic battle for someone’s soul, or some great journey of discovery, but in reality it was simply routine bureaucracy. No one was going to learn anything, and fate was already set in place by some unknowable and inaccessible deity, who most likely wouldn’t even admit if it wasn’t planned. Even with all of Marty’s knowledge about the inner workings of the universe, of all space and time, he just couldn’t be sure of just how much She knew and what She controlled.
     Like that, right there. God wasn’t even a specific gender. When Marty thought of God, or discussed God with the other angels, he never knew which pronoun he might use. Sometimes it was “he,” sometimes “her,” sometimes “it.” Sometimes it was “them,” not just as a singular pronoun, but because as his mind thought of God as he was thinking or speaking, it conjured up the idea in his head that They were somehow more than one entity. It was like the very idea of God was a constantly shifting and fluid thing.
     How exactly was Marty, or anyone, expected to please Him or do the right thing? It was like hitting a moving target that didn’t even appear the same from one second to the next. One more reason to not bother trying. There wasn’t even any real company mission statement, just some vague concept of good versus evil, and no clear idea what constituted either.
     Like this orange dolt he was in charge of now. Was he evil or stupid? Probably both. He most likely succeeded in being evil in spite of himself. He might not even know any better. He was probably just sick in the head, but in the profoundly sick society mankind lived in, most people didn't notice. There were a bunch of sick people in hell who weren't evil, just saddled with psychosis and mental illness.
     By the same token, there were certainly a lot of clueless people who got into heaven not because they made a lot of conscious decisions to be good and wholesome. Most of them were clueless, but they never did anything bad enough to warrant going to hell. It wasn’t like they were harboring any terrible thoughts and desires inside them, they were just boring and unimaginative. They took no chances, and they sort of snuck in under the wire. Eternity wasn't much different for them than life was, they simply sat up here and watched the time pass, almost like they were in a coma.
     The system was broken. "Oh well, on earth as it is in heaven" thought Marty, with his usual cynicism.
     It was all very relative and confusing, and Marty hated that he even thought about it. Still, no matter how many times he made up his mind that none of it mattered at all, he would find himself obsessing over the same pointless questions. Marty had a lot of trouble making his epiphanies and resolutions stick, even for a moment, so in that regard he was very much like humans after all.
     Marty and Trump were now traversing the astral plane. It would have filled any human soul with incomprehensible wonder, but Trump was just looking intently at his phone. In what Marty was afraid was just one more bit of proof to Trump that he could get whatever he wanted by complaining, he had finally just relented and given him his phone. He made it so that Trump could only see what was going on back on Earth, he couldn’t tweet or interact with anyone. He knew he shouldn’t have done it, but he just couldn’t take all the whining and complaining anymore. He assumed that since he was able to do it, that it must fit into the Divine Plan somehow, so he didn’t worry about it.
     “Look at this crap!” Trump was saying now. “I can’t believe what they are saying about me down there. I’ve never seen people say such awful things about someone who just died.”
     “Well,” Marty replied, “to be fair, it’s pretty much the same things they were saying about you when you were alive.”
     “Really?” Trump responded, seeming genuinely surprised. “I noticed some nasty comments from reporters during my press conferences, but nothing like this. It’s like people really hate me.”
     “Of course they hate you,” Marty confirmed. “You’re a horrible person, I keep telling you that. Didn’t you ever read any of the billions of articles criticizing you and your actions? Didn’t you read any of the replies to your tweets?”
     “Tweets have replies?” Trump said. “I never realized. And I don’t read articles by haters and phony news organizations, or from all the eggheads who think that they know more than me. That’s why the common man loves me!”
     “I’ve been watching human history for a few thousand years,” said Marty, “and I have to tell you, a lot of those “common men” aren’t really the best judges of character. People in charge tend to keep a lot of them in the dark about a lot of things. Most of them are good people, as far as people go, but they live their whole lives in a tiny world of their own making.”
     “Yeah, they’re stupid!” Trump exclaimed. “I hate them, but they are useful.”
     Another sigh from Marty.
     “Yes, you hold them in contempt. We get it.”
     “No,” Trump clarified, “I just hate them, and think that they’re beneath me. They're worthless, other than getting them to work themselves to death or vote for me.”
     “Yes, that’s pretty much the definition of contempt ...”
     “It’s hilarious, really,” Trump continued on uninterrupted. “They constantly vote against their own interests, and all I have to do to get them to do it is appeal to their hate and anger.” He laughed uproariously. “They’re so fucking dumb!”
     “They aren’t dumb,” Marty protested, “they’re misinformed and demoralized. They have no tools to figure any of it out, or think beyond their own noses.”
     Marty thought about it, and was horrified to realize that he was actually sticking up for people. Horrible people, at that. A lot of people happened to be born into bad circumstances, and raised on hate and ignorance and never taught how to give or receive love, was it now their fault that they were horrible? Yes, of course. But no, maybe not. Why did Marty care about any of this? He hated people.
     “Look,” he finally responded, “they might be dumb, and maybe a little bit evil, but a lot of them never had a chance.” He thought some more.
     “Okay, most of them had plenty of chances to figure it out, I guess.” Marty was floundering. “Still, a lot of them are good people in other ways. Of course, you can extrapolate that to the whole “Hitler loved dogs” thing.” He was clearly struggling with all this.
     It was then he looked at Trump, and saw that he had a look that was a mixture of incredulousness and disgust on his face. Trump was just staring at him, almost in disbelief.
     “What?” Marty asked, annoyed.
     “Who the fuck cares?” Came Trump’s reply. “The people you’re talking about don’t matter at all. They’re just part of the big mass of humanity that exists to work and die. I mean, I guess it’s sad, I don’t know, but that’s how the world works. Important people like me get to make the rules and get the benefits, and most people just do all the grunt work. That’s all they're worth. If they wanted to be something more, they should try harder to make something of themselves and get ahead.”
     Marty didn’t even bother responding to that. He knew all about entitlement and opportunity and socioeconomic status. He knew about generational cycles, and how hatred and ignorance was passed down. He knew about a hundred other things that made up all the complexities about the convoluted myth of the common man and getting ahead in the world, but he caught himself before he wasted any time trying to explain it.
     Marty had watched all of human civilization, even if just in passing. He saw that men like Trump were common as well; elite plutocrats and tyrants, dismissive of people they viewed as somehow lesser than them for a multitude of superficial and manufactured reasons. Less than human. Slave labor that greased the wheels of industry, cannon fodder that fought pointless wars, billions of people denied their humanity because they were seen as so much brick and mortar that made up the world they ruled over. Nothing could change the mind of a person who lost sight of the simple fact that everyone was human and deserved some kind of basic dignity and respect.
     Marty had to remind himself again that he didn’t really like people. Still, he supposed that he didn’t hate them. He didn’t want them to suffer. He just didn’t care … He stopped himself there because he realized that maybe he was like Trump in some ways. The thought horrified him. No, it was different. He didn’t take advantage of people, he wasn’t evil. He just wanted nothing to do with them. They had nothing to offer him.
     He winced at that thought as well. He didn’t only care about people who could help him, did he? Maybe he just hadn’t thought about it in those terms. Who cares?  He finally ended up chiding himself in his mind.  I’m not human, I owe them nothing, and they owe me nothing. I’m just some shit head angel who thinks too much. Besides, they had finally arrived on Earth, to see if Trump could help his first charge and gain some points.

     Marty and Trump arrived in an office, and the man sitting at the desk had his head in his hands, and was obviously distressed. He picked up some papers off his desk, and rifled through them, and tossed them back on the desk again. He stared into the distance and emitted an audible groan, and wondered just what he was going to do.
     “Okay,” Marty said, “This man is Carl, and his business is …” He trailed off as he noticed that Trump was still looking at his phone, not even paying attention. “Mr. Trump!” He said loudly.
     “Huh?” Trump replied, not looking up. “What is it?”
     “Will you put your damn phone away and listen to me!”
     Trump looked up, studied Marty’s face, and even though he wanted to go back to his phone, the angry glare he was getting from the angel made him slide it into his pocket.
     “Okay, I’m listening,” he said.
     “Well, as I was saying,” Marty started again, “this man is Carl, and his business is going under. The pandemic and the recession has hit him hard, and he’s in danger of losing everything. He’s afraid that his family will wind up in the street.”
     “Okay, so what do you want me to do?” Asked Trump.
     “This is why you’re here. You need to help him, to make him see that it will be alright and he can get through this. You need to inspire him.”
     “Inspire him? Okay, I got this. Let’s see …” Trump thought for a moment. “Okay, I got nothing.”
     “Really?” Marty asked. “There’s nothing you can think of to help him?”
     “Well, to be honest, I don’t really know a lot about the nuts and bolts of business.”
     “Aren’t you a billionaire? Didn't you write a book about it?”
     “Yeah, what’s your point?” Trump just stared at him.
     “Well, you’re going to have to do something. I’m going to make it so he can see and hear you now, so you better think fast.”
     Marty waved his hand, and Carl looked on in shock as the recently deceased Donald Trump materialized in his office.
     “Omg, I’ve really lost it,” said Carl. “I have lost my mind.”
     “You haven’t lost anything,” Trump replied, annoyed. “I’m like a ghost or an angel or something, and I’m here to help you, I guess.”
     Carl continued to stare in disbelief.
     “So I hear you have money problems,” Trump continued. “I can figure this out.” Still, he just stood there staring back at Carl.
     “Okay,” Carl said tentatively, “what can I do about this mess?”
     Trump just continued to stare, and half-heartedly shrugged his shoulders.
     “Um, get some money, I guess …” Trump said. “Oooh, yeah! Borrow it from your dad!”
     “My dad doesn’t have any money,” Carl replied. “He’s on a fixed income.”
     “Well, I don’t know what that means.” Trump looked over at Marty and held his palms out, and shrugged his shoulders again.
     “I don’t know what this guy wants from me,” he told the angel.
     “You really don’t have any advice at all for him?” Marty asked.
     “I don’t know, when my businesses failed, I just got more money from my dad.” Trump truly seemed at a loss.
     “Excuse me,” Carl interrupted. “Who are you talking to?”
     “I’m talking to Manny here,” Trump explained. “He’s my angel.”
     Carl just looked on, dumbfounded.
     “First off, it’s Marty,” Marty reminded him again, “and he can’t see me. You’re supposed to be doing this on your own.”
     Trump turned back to Carl.
     “Look Ken, …” he started
     “Carl!” said Marty.
     “Whatever. Look Carl, we can figure this all out, right? I mean, I’m a genius. I’m the president, for fuck’s sake …”
     “Former president.” Marty and Carl said in unison.
     “Whatever,” continued Trump, tersely. “I can come up with a solution.” He thought some more.
     “Okay,” he said, in a burst of inspiration, “just get the bank to give you more money. That's what they do. Problem solved!”
     “That’s not going to work,” Carl replied. “I’m already mortgaged to the hilt. My credit is maxed.”
     “Okay,” Trump forged on, “lay off your employees.”
     “I’ve already laid off most of my workers, I’m down to a skeleton crew as it is. It broke my heart laying off my people. If I lay the rest off, I’m definitely out of business.”
     “Well, that’s easy to fix,” Trump said, “Just keep them working and don’t pay them! In fact, there you go: just stop paying all your bills.”
     “I can’t just stop paying my employees and creditors,” Carl protested. “That’s nuts!”
     “I don’t know,” countered Trump. “I do it all the time.” He started chuckling at that.
     “Excuse me,” Carl asked, “What’s so funny?”
     “Well,” Trump said, “I just realized that I’m dead. I stiffed them all, and there’s nothing they can do about it! All those contractors, all those cities where I held rallies and never paid them. All those lawsuits and class action stuff. I never paid any of them, and now I'm dead!”
     Carl looked at him in disgust.
     “That’s not how I do business, Mr. Trump.”
     “Yeah, and look at you!” Trump fired back. “You’re going under!”
     “Okay, look, I’m confused,” Carl replied. “Are you here to help me, or ...I mean, why are you here?”
     “Yes, I’m here to help you, loser. Let me think.” Trump pondered some more.
     “And you don’t know any foreign “investors” who need a favor?” He asked.
     “Are you talking about helping foreign powers by giving them access to American secrets or politicians, or laundering money? Isn’t that illegal?”
     “Okay, you’re one of those,” Trump said. “Who did you vote for?”
     “Biden,” replied Carl.
     “Alright, seriously, fuck this guy,” Trump said, turning to Marty. “He didn’t even vote for me!”
     “And that means you’re not going to help him?” Asked Marty.
     “Hello!” Answered Trump. “Why would I help anyone who didn’t vote for me? I didn’t help any of those blue states. Fuck them.”
     Marty sighed, and his shoulders slumped.
     “As president, weren’t you supposed to help all Americans?” Marty asked.
     “Yeah, okay,” said Trump. “I was a republican, I’m only obligated to help other republicans.”
     “Yeah, I don’t think that’s how it works,” Marty countered.
     “Look, who’s the president here?” Trump exploded
     “Former preside …”
     “Fine, former president!” Trump bellowed. “I’m tired of this. Take me home.”
     “There is no home, Mr. Trump,” Marty reminded him.
     During all this, Carl just looked on helplessly. To him, it seemed like Trump was having some deranged, one-sided conversation with himself.
     “Look Mr. Trump,” he said, “I’m at my wit’s end here. Is there anything you can do to help?”
     Trump spun around to look at him.
     “You’re still here?” He asked, annoyed.
     Carl fumbled for an answer, but found none.
     “If you can’t help him, at least comfort him,” coached Marty. “Make him see that he matters and things can work out.”
     Trump continued to stare at him, as if he couldn't even comprehend what Marty was trying him, and it was making him angry. Finally, he threw his hands up as if to say "whatever," and turned his attention back to Carl.
     “Look, uh …” Trump started to say, but faltered and froze.
     “Carl.” Carl reminded him.
     “Carl, yes.” Trump looked very uncomfortable. “You know, uh, you matter, and, um, things will work out …”
     “Don’t just repeat what I said!” Marty half yelled.
     “Well, I don’t know what to tell him! I’m not good at this. I don’t really care!” Trump was getting really petulant now.
     “Don’t say that you don’t care!” Marty said, flustered. “He can hear you!”
     “But I don’t care! Why would anyone care about this guy? He can’t run a business, he can’t take care of his family, he’s useless!”
     “Oh my God!” Exclaimed Marty, materializing in the office. He turned to Carl, who was shell shocked at this point. “I’m so sorry! He didn’t mean that.”
     “I did mean that!” Trump said. “I hate this and I hate being nice and I hate Carl!”
     “You hate me?” Carl asked, taken aback. “Are there no answers for me? Aren’t you going to help me? I thought angels helped people.”
     “Don’t count on that,” Trump said, “this guy has been useless so far.”
     “Hey!” Marty protested. “I keep telling you, I’m not here to help you, I'm more of a guide… ”
     “Well, you're bad at that, too! Yet I’m supposed to help this guy? No offense, Carl, but you’re really not worth helping. I mean, I’m me, and no one is helping me at all, so what chance do you have.”
     Carl just slumped back into his chair and looked sullen and defeated.
     “Look at what you did to poor Carl!” Marty cried. “You are so bad at this!”
     "Poor Carl?!" Trump was back to being incredulous again. "What about poor me? This whole experience has been annoying and boring. I don't see anyone kissing my ass!"
     "And of course you make this all about you…" Said Marty." That's sure to get you into heaven."
     “Whatever,” Trump said dismissively, “I’m done. I’ll be over here in the corner on my phone when you’re ready to leave.” With that, he leaned against the wall, and started browsing the OAN site on his phone.
     “Look Carl,” Marty said, “I am so sorry about all this.”
     So you can help me?” Carl asked, hopefully.
     “Ah, no,” Marty told him. “That’s not how this works. People aren’t really my department.”
     “But you’ll send another angel that will help me?”
     “I’m afraid not,” Marty said, feeling very uncomfortable.
     “Well, then what’s going to happen?”
     “What’s going to happen is that I will erase the memory of all this, and you will have to figure out just what to do on your own.”
     “On my own?” Carl asked, panicking. “I can’t do this on my own! I thought that’s why you came here in the first place.”
     “Yes, well, sorry,” Marty stammered. “I’m sure it will all work out, divine plan and silver linings and all that.”
     With that, Marty held up his hand and a bright light flashed, and Trump and he were gone, and Carl was back holding his head in his hands, at the very moment before Trump and Marty showed up. He had a vague feeling that he had been talking to someone, but wrote it off as more stress induced crazy. As for now, he had no idea what he was going to do. He started to cry.

     “Well, that was a disaster,” Marty was telling Trump now, back on the couch in the holding room in the afterlife.
     “I did warn you that I don’t care about people,” Trump said. “This is kind of your fault.”
     “Listen, I can’t keep explaining this to you,” Marty said, “You better learn, or you’re going to hell. Forever.”
     “Yeah, I’m still not worried,” Trump stated. “I’ll be fine.”
     Marty waved his hand, and now the room was a bedroom.
     “Look, get some sleep, and we’ll try this again tomorrow.”
     “I’m not really tired,” said Trump. “I usually stay up until three, tweeting and such. I’m not about to go to sleep now. And another thi …”
     Marty had waved his hand, and Trump was instantly sound asleep. He really didn’t know how he was going to get through this. He couldn’t stop thinking about Carl, and wondered what would happen to him. It was easier to not care about people when he didn’t have to interact with them. Watching billions of them at a time on a big screen kind of insulated you from thinking of them as individuals, with hopes and dreams and heartbreak.
     Marty tried to remember what that was like, but as he drifted off to sleep later, he had a hard time recapturing his professional detachment. What was happening to him?
     Stupid fucking Trump … he thought, as he finally dozed off.