The Strangely Prophetic Power of Three Ring.
I wrote a political satire in the midst of the Trump presidency. It turned out to be disarmingly human.
By the midpoint of Donald Trump’s turn in the Oval Office things were getting pretty weird. Strangest to me was his continuation of the surreal Trump rallies that had helped him win election, even though an actual campaign was two years in either direction.
I had an idea. An experiment, actually. I created a fictional character based on Mr. Trump. Phineas J. Bale, a washed-up revival tent preacher who finds a new career as the ring master of a mysterious traveling circus.
Then used the immediacy of Medium to tell his story in serialized form. I always liked the idea of a serialized novel. Charles Dickens published some of his most famous stories in weekly installments.
Because Medium is on-line and immediate, I didn’t have to think ahead to write each installment. I could let the events of the day determine the story line. I read about Donald Trump ranting that kids couldn’t go to the circus and see an elephant anymore. So in the next segment of my story Bale acquired an elephant named John the Evangelist — a ragged old elephant with an odor problem and a passage from the Book of Revelations tattooed on his hide.
