Banished to the Island of the Toadasaurs
A satirical search for actual truth
The little boy and girl held hands, carefully following a few steps behind the old man. The Commander shuffled down the hill towards the causeway that connected the island to the mainland while the sun sank beneath the marsh and the warm, blue water.
Long strings of words flew over his shoulder and onto the children; but they had no idea what they meant.
“Very unfair, we need to block the fake news, the hacks and thugs…good people don’t need to hear that stuff… they make everything up.”
“Radical left extremists and communists get away with murder… they love their witch-hunts. But we’re going to take those losers down and we’ll do it fast… so, so fast.”
“Believe me many, many, hugely classy people know that I’ve got the answers.. They love me, and big, big stuff… huge stuff is ready to happen… it’s already happening. And they come to me because they want to know the truth.”
Although the little girl was uncomfortable interrupting, she finally said “Why aren’t we turning around? We’re not allowed to go down the long road. It’s dangerous.”
The Commander laughed and said “You wouldn’t have a chance without me, but I know what I’m doing.”
They reached the bottom of the hill and started down the causeway; a narrow dirt road raised a couple of feet above the marsh.
The little boy was only five, but he felt relatively brave at the moment and he was fascinated by the sounds that surrounded them. Bassy “Bop ba bop bop burrr” and bright “buzzop buzzop” rhythms mixed with interesting mid-range tones.. muted “buck, bucka bucka ba ba buck” kind of sounds.
So he asked “What are all of the beeping noises?”
The Commander laughed again and said “Those, my boy, are the toadasaurs I’ve warned you about.. they’re very small, but they hunt in packs and could strip a little one like you to bones in seconds.. that’s why I’m here to keep you safe.”
The little boy shivered and the little girl put her arm around him.
Halfway down the causeway, they reached a large mailbox and the commander rummaged through the contents.
“I have many, many friends, yes, a true home run…. wonderful letters, from real patriots, these beautiful men and women just love me.”
As they walked, the children repeatedly heard “love that guy” and “no losers… nope, none of them.”
When they arrived back at the mansion, the little girl and boy left the old man reading letters in the den, the size of two Olympic swimming pools, in front of a fireplace that could easily hold a medium sized firetruck.
The children went to the kitchen, they found the food the servants had left for them and then they went up the back steps to bed.
The servants returned to the mansion at 6:00 a.m., they bathed and fed the children and had them dressed and ready for the crowd.
At 9:00, the incredibly large crowd of two hundred or so drug themselves onto the island. Men carrying white supremacist and neo-Nazi signs fired celebratory gunshots into the air while anti-vaxxers and their brethren, carried signs that compared the great leader to God.
The largest group wasn’t really a group at all, consisting of individuals with individual problems…Lost jobs, medical bills, broken families…The Commander promised each and every one that he would solve their problems as soon as he got back in office.
Overall, the entire crowd had little in common, other than they were mad and had chosen the same leader as their savior… as a result, it was impossible for them to imagine that they were ever wrong, and therefore, he could never be wrong.
The orange hair could easily be seen as far as the causeway. He stood on the balcony and graciously waved the “crowd” onto the lush lawn while the children quietly sat in their little chairs, one on each side of the glorious one.
Conspicuously absent, the large corporations and rich people, who had gained the most from the ex-president, had moved on to happier hunting grounds; they had all the tax breaks they could possibly use and no longer needed him.
But these significant absences never fazed the Commander; he still had a crowd to incite.
As usual, he started with a short speech, lasting an hour or two, and then the Commander, the boy and the girl, descended the great main stairway to meet the people in the lavish reception hall.
The crowd squeezed in, gushing with overwhelmingly sweet praise- like barbecue sauce on brownies.
But there was plenty of anger aimed elsewhere. Many railed against science, education, communists and unanimously, ever dangerous liberals.
Some ranted about the people groups that they held responsible for all of the bad things in the world.
But the ever gracious Commander easily parsed all of their worries, responding ”Yes that is a wonderful idea” and “I love you good, good people…you are making a difference” before repeating the same phrases to the next group he passed.
The children were swarmed by the same people every day; devotees who needed to absorb the Commander’s lifestyle and secrets- as if there was something inside him that could bring the relief that they desperately needed.
The children were never at ease during this phase; they simply had no idea what to tell these people.
As lunch approached, the servants herded the crowd into the great dining hall. The Commander and his favorites were seated at a raised table at the back of the hall. The great ones ate multiple courses while the followers watched from a distance and ate whatever they had brought with them.
The children were removed to the kitchen and ate with the staff. In near total silence, it was pretty much the opposite of the fanfare in the dining hall and the children kind of liked it.
Then the speeches started.
The Commander traditionally introduced the airing of grievances with the topic du jour most likely to ignite passions and spiced his introduction with some variation of the required phrases:
- I must tell you
- I’m doing very well
- Believe me
- I won
- I have many, many friends
- The most transparent president in history
- Never seen before, ever
- Radical left, communists, socialists and fascists
- Laughing at us
- Doesn’t have a clue
- Getting away with murder
- Not gonna happen
After the speech, anyone in the audience who wanted to talk had a chance to hear themselves reiterating all of the problems of the world through the PA system.
The well spoken, and those who fought to create an understandable sentence, all had one thing in common. Their anger and hatred consistently drove short messages that solved nothing.
The idea of cooperation offended them, they believed that those who forgive seventy times seven are weak and they were vehemently opposed to loving their enemies.
As a result of the monotone thinking, the crowd came together in a loose, gravel-like form of agreement; their grievances provided cohesion and the commander innately felt the phase shift and announced the next stage of the day.
The Commander then retired to private rooms to strategize, while the crowd discussed the life changing events they had just experienced.
Often accompanied by beautiful women, he appeared and disappeared many different times throughout the afternoon.
The children intentionally did their best to understand nothing so that they would have nothing to report when the crowd overwhelmed them the following day.
Instead, they used this time to search for Mrs. White. While most of the crowd honed their plans to take over the government, she simply had a desire to be with other people and had been surreptitiously teaching the children math, spelling, reading and writing for more than a year.
By 3:00 p.m. the crowd began to thin and at 4:00, the men in the black suits with radios rounded up any holdovers and drove them away across the land bridge.
And nothing ever changed until the day when everything changed.
The 11-year-old boy started the walk to the mailbox at exactly 3:00 p.m. The Commander had been sick for two days, and for the first time, he had given the child the task of retrieving all of the great words that recharged him.
Of course the child was terrified of the toadasaurs, but the Commander assured him that he would be safe if he moved quickly.
The boy was excited and scared; honored that the commander had finally given him a grown up task… a chance to do something helpful for the leader and his community. He quickly grabbed thirty or so envelopes and ran back to the mansion faster than he’d ever run before.
Crossing the great, green, manicured lawn at high speed, his mission was marred when he tripped over one of the recessed sprinklers and letters flew in every direction.
Embarrassed, and concerned that others might see him as weak, he quickly scooped up everything and ran to one of the many benches that lined the front of the mansion.
As he wiped away the grass shavings and organized the letters back into a neat pile, he noticed that his name was on one of the envelopes and he was very excited because he had never received any mail.
Not knowing what the Commander would think, he gently opened the letter, telling himself that he could always close it if the contents were dangerous.
“My dear ‘brother’ “… the boy sounded out the words one syllable at a time but had no idea what the symbols around the word “brother” meant.
I write to you every month, knowing that the Commander must have destroyed the other letters, because I know you will want to be with me once you understand the truth.
The day that I last saw you, the day that the Commander ordered Mrs. White off of the island, I knew that something was very wrong. Other people could read and write and I couldn’t understand why the commander didn’t want us to learn.
So I talked one of the other children into changing clothes with me and walked off the island with a large group in the mid-afternoon.
As I left the island, I looked back and saw the sign that announced “You are approaching the Commander’s private island; My friends are welcome between 9:00 and 4:00 and everybody else will be shot.”
I walked up a forested path and then I noticed a beautiful little stone cottage sitting in shade at the top of a little hill.
There was an old lady in a rocking chair on the porch, and for some reason, I walked straight up to her and she said “Little girl come up here and have some cookies.”
The first big surprise was Mrs. Margaret’s skin.. I know this will be hard for you to understand, but a large portion of the people in this world have dark skin; brown, red and even black.
The second surprise was Mrs. Margaret immediately loved me.. she took me into her house and talked to me about everything and let me live in her daughter’s room.. her daughter had grown up and had moved to the city many years before.
After I told her my story, she told me all of the many, many things that you need to know and here’s the most important stuff:
The Commander used to rule the world… I now understand that it really is only one country, but it’s a very big country and a very important country.
He became Commander by telling people whatever they wanted to hear. If they had trouble with their neighbors, he would tell them he would make their neighbors go away. If they didn’t have money, he told them he would get them jobs.
But those were lies… he just said them to get elected. He didn’t end up helping the people.
What he did do was give the biggest tax break to large companies, ever. And he upset other countries that were our friends and he became buddies with bad countries, because he liked the way that their leaders had complete control and could do whatever they wanted.
After he did this kind of stuff over and over, most people understood that you can’t trust a liar and they voted him out. However, some of his followers couldn’t admit that they were wrong so they invented more lies to try to convince people that he didn’t lose the election.
After that didn’t work, they tried to take over the government by force! It took a long time for everyone to realize that this was very bad for everyone. But over time most remembered that one of our country’s greatest strengths is that all of the people get to choose who is in charge.
He led another uprising a couple of years later, and after the second riot, the vast majority agreed to banish him to the island.. but they didn’t want to make a martyr out of him… I’ll explain what that means when I see you.
You and I and the people with dark glasses were the only ones allowed to live with the Commander. Anybody who wants to listen to him can make a trip to the island any day at 9:00 and the only other way he can communicate is with letters.
A very small number of sad and sick people still visit the island. They are confused or want to get things their way and they see him as the way to get what they want- without needing to understand what everyone else needs.
The good news is that our country realized that groups of people who scream at each other can’t get any work done. They have learned to “compromise”- it’s like the times where you got to cut the cookie in two, but I got to choose the piece I liked best.
So now for the big surprise. We aren’t actually brother and sister… we are cousins but it doesn’t change the way that I feel about you.
I am his great granddaughter and you are a great nephew and our families sent us to be with him because the law says only family members can live with him.
I have since met my parents and your mother and they are very rich like the Commander. And they’re very mad at me because they were hoping that if we grew up with the Commander, the people might vote us in so that they could once again have power.
But that way of thinking is now rare. Most people have learned that we need diversity and truth… because everyone is good at something and we can work together if we are not overwhelmed by lies.
You are being taught the opposite; that people should hate others and take whatever they want. In time, that will really mess you up, so get off of that island and come here and you will be loved!
Also, toadasours aren’t real! That was a lie to keep us on the island. Just cross the marsh on the long road and come find me at the first house on the left of the path!
With Much Love, Laura
The boy read the letter three times. The first time was extremely hard. At first, he only understood that his sister had written a letter and told him that she wasn’t really his sister.
But when he finished reading the letter the third time, all of the words made sense.
He ran into the reception hall and up the grand stairs and through the secret door and up the steps to the Commander’s room.
The Commander was dressed in a robe and sitting in a rocking chair in front of a roaring fire.
The boy handed him the letter and said “This is from my sister, Laura, but she tells me that she’s not really my sister. She also told me that I am living in a very bad place and that I need to leave as soon as possible.”
The Commander received the letter with a quiet grunt and rapidly skimmed it over. When he finished, he looked at the little boy and said “Do you understand what a lie is?”
The little boy nodded “yes sir” and the commander continued.
“Well this letter is nothing but lies.. it was created by the bad people who want to stop me from helping others.. do you understand?”
“The people who wrote this letter aren’t Laura.. she probably died the day that she walked off the island. They tell you all these horrible things because they want to tempt you away from safety.. but luckily I am here to take care of you and you never have to worry about the bad people again.”
He flicked the letter into the fire and watched it burn.
But the little boy said “But the letter sounded like Laura and Laura loved me” and he started to gently cry.
The Commander looked at the boy and said “You are too young and weak to understand.. it won’t be long before you learn that women are horrible, deceitful, controlling people and Laura was a girl and she grew up to be a deceitful, dangerous woman.
The boy stopped crying and said “I don’t understand. You said she was dead.”
“And you spend time alone everyday with women in the discussion rooms. if all women are dangerous, why do you do that?”
“The Commander looked away and finally said, well maybe you are old enough…”
“When you become a man you will learn that it’s easy to control women.. you can do anything. All you have to do is reach out and grab them by their (censored).
Minutes before sunup, the little boy ran the full length of the causeway as fast as he could. No longer scared of toadasaurs, he wanted to make sure that the people with the black outfits didn’t have a chance to stop him.
Notes
I stepped out of a grocery store one evening to hear an extremely interesting song in the distance…
Somewhere between techno and hip-hop, the bass was a very syncopated “bop ba bop bop burrr” groove. Tighter and more fluid than the noise from the average tricked out car, the booming came from the other side of the parking lot.
But there was more. There was a top end with a bright “buzzop buzzop” rhythm and a very intricate mid-range — something like “buck, bucka bucka ba ba buck”.
As a musician, I simply had to figure out the source of this incredible rhythm section and my ears led me around the side of the store. As I started to go around a large tractor trailer, the sounds became more and more clear until I was staring at a pond and I was listening to the sound of a thousand frogs celebrating spring.
The side of the building and tractor trailer had filtered out most of the high-end harmonics, the core of frog sounds, and the leftover fundamentals sounded far more rhythmic than melodic.
As soon as my brain realized it had been fooled by frogs, I imagined how fun it would be to walk other people through the same experience. And considering how different the original pattern sounded, my brain jumped to the crazy idea of convincing young children that the sound was something other than frogs.
Of course that would be completely evil and I couldn’t imagine anybody doing something like that until…
Trump… the only person in the world that I could imagine taking something innocent and interesting and turning it into something bad.
As soon as I had that revelation, the story wrote itself. I had wanted to write about the insanity of electing someone who had spoken literally thousands of lies with a clear record of ingratiating himself and destroying our country and now the framework was just sitting there.
I was one of the people who was completely surprised when Trump won.
When a male candidate is on record saying you can get women to do anything if you grab them by the genitals, I was certain he had lost the entire female electorate. In my mind, that was more than enough to count him out.
But when you add his list of fears and unimaginative, impossible ways of combating them, it seemed to me that very few men would vote for him either.
All he seemed capable of was identifying common problems and then saying he would somehow fix them- with absolutely no experience or ability to describe what he was going to do.
There’s no way you could get a funded business case with such a complete lack of knowledge and I believed my fellow Americans would clearly see that the dots were not connected.
So when he was elected, I had to go back and figure out what happened. In retrospect, it seems clear that fate brought multiple groups together.
The first group was simply fearful — the elderly, poor and disenfranchised. Trump listed the problems they faced and simply stated that he would solve those problems. He had no plan, but they believed him because they desperately needed help.
The second group was simply opportunistic. White supremacists, racists, misogynists and large corporations realized that Trump would support them in exchange for power.
Finally, the religious right must have understood that Trump was the opposite of a biblical savior; a self-serving, pompous, liar… entirely devoid of humble, love your neighbor, and especially, love your enemy skills.
Apparently the modern Evangelical movement no longer understands what these words mean.
Either way, they were willing to trade everything for supreme court nominees who would vote against abortion.
They got what they wanted, but it isn’t clear if they understand how much they destroyed.
Altogether, the moral of the story should be clear: if you are 11 or older and not trapped on an island, there is an incredible amount of documentation that should make it clear that Trump is a liar who accomplished very little and created major problems for this country. Run away!
Writing
Based on the toadasaur framework, the outline took less than 20 minutes.
The little boy is the confused populace who didn’t understand the lies- until they did. And then they immediately ran away, as you would expect them to do.
Island banishment was an easy setting.. Napoleon was an even greater despot so Trump’s Island is probably a little nicer :-)
The actual writing was a little more difficult. On one hand I wanted the children to sound somewhat childlike. Laura would have been 14 or 15 when she wrote the letter so she needed simple, yet wise words.
And from the beginning, I realized that I didn’t want to write a Trump speech- we’ve had more than enough of that nonsense.
So replacing Trump’s words became the fun part. I collected Trumpisms, put them in logical order, and then I let him shoot himself in the foot with his famous instructions about controlling women.
Last but not least, I tried to soften the story a bit. Most of the people that I know who voted for Trump ultimately realized that it was a big mistake.
Most of them had been fooled by his TV persona. They weren’t aware of his bankruptcies and lawsuits and multiple marriages that made it clear he was not a great leader or capable of getting things done.
Instead they saw an actor who seemed to get things done on TV.
So I invented Mrs. White to represent the good people who didn’t recognize the lies until it was too late.
I don’t want “Mr. and Mrs. Whites” to feel guilty. I want them to wake up and vote for candidates who are neither liberal or conservative, who are wise, and have the skills to put together competent solutions that use the best thinking from the left and right to move this country in a positive direction.
Michael Stierhoff 2024
Michael Stierhoff is a writer, business analyst and musician focused on discovering truth that helps everyone grow.
