Villains (and by villains I mean good villains) have to play by certain rules — or they can’t be good villains.
For starters — villains must have a good reason to be villainous. There are plenty of mediocre villains — Bond level villains included — who seem to have no other purpose in life than to achieve world dominance — or, to their dying breath, go after the person preventing them. I’ve never met anyone like that — and I’ve worked in Hollywood.
Voldemort is an excellent villain, for example, because — in addition to wanting ultimate power — he’s a neurotic mess. Being the ultimate power will settle a personal score — and that’s really why he’s doing it. Villains have to be believable characters — believably bad but also believably human.
Think of Kathy Bates’ Annie Wilkes (in Misery). She’s a terrifying villain mostly because she’s soooooooo human.
Good storytelling demands good villains and good villains demand real human traits.
Donald Trump is a villain. For real.
As we’re learning, he’s been a very real villain for a lot longer than either we realized or wanted to admit that we realized. Trump’s a pervert and a rapist. People know these things. There’s always talk. There were always people along Trump’s blighted way who realized who and what Trump was. They let it slide.
Trump became POTUS by cooperating with Russia. Every Trump move since he took the oath of office has weakened America and strengthened Russia. People have died because of this. Died terrible deaths they did not deserve. Trump isn’t the only villain in this story — not by a long shot. Everyone who kept quiet, who knew or even just suspected what Trump was up to owed it to the rest of us to share.
What makes Trump’s villainy so extra awful is that it’s always been so patently obvious. It’s been so obvious, in fact, that it went right by us.
A big reveal is coming. A monster-sized reveal. That it will surprise anyone is tragic: Donald Trump is a traitor.
That it will surprise Americans will be, in large part because our press has been so slow to show up at the treason party. Think about how long it took them to show up for the Russia party. It wasn’t that long ago that some conservative talking heads STILL downplayed Russian influence because Trump did.
Our Main Stream News Media has the remarkable ability to report news — on its very own air — then act as if they’d never reported any such thing. How often do they turn from a story about all the ways Trump acts like a traitor to a story about Trump’s 2020 campaign as if Trump suddenly stopped being a traitor?
That’s the distinct feeling one gets: in the common wisdom, Trump’s only a traitor if they report that story directly. So long as they can weasel word their way around it — his reason is “obscure” — every treasonous Trump move gets chalked up to some other cause. Weasel words are music to a villain’s ears.
Trump has been a racist since birth. As far as I’m concerned, that makes Trump if not a verifiable racist himself, then someone who knows a mess of rapists and always seems compelled to spread racism’s “good news”.
Trump has also been a rapist from the moment he first realized he could score a little pleasure by forcing his teeny-tiny mushroom dick on any woman he wanted. That fact alone should make Trump a card-carrying rapist.
Trump’s also been a misogynist and a pederast and a crook and a traitor. Oh, FFS — and a VILLAIN. His whole life.
And yet — despite this fact, the MSM will have a catharsis shortly — they’ll pass a point beyond which they can’t dither anymore. Trump isn’t just a “different” kind of potus, he’s a goddamned criminal. THAT’S what makes him “different”.
And then the MSM will go apeshit — broadcasting this incredible reveal 24/7 at maximum volume. Donald Trump isn’t just a traitor, he’s a villain!
But, and this is what the MSM won’t get — it won’t mean that Trump “just became” a traitor and a villain, it will mean he’s been one all along.
And that will mean the MSM has gotten that traitor & villain’s story wrong all along. It’s goddamned villainous, I tell ya…