What is the overwhelming emotion Donald Trump is feeling on the day of his Presidential inauguration? Triumph? Pride? Sheer worry at how he’s going to achieve what he’s promised?
We can only speculate but if I were to guess, he’s feeling something along the lines of the sentiments expressed in Delusions of Grandeur, a 20-year-old song released as a B-side by British synth-pop duo the Pet Shop Boys.
Much of the media and liberal elite still can’t comprehend Trump’s victorious movement so I would advise them to take a four-minute break from the “Apocalypse Now” punditry and listen to the song.
Best known for their 1980s hits West End Girls, It’s a Sin and their cover of Always On My Mind, the Pet Shop Boys based Delusions of Grandeur on Hadrian VII, the novel by Frederick William Rolfe who called himself Baron Corvo.
The novel is about a failed candidate for the priesthood who unexpectedly becomes Pope and wreaks revenge on his enemies. Delusions of Grandeur- a catchy, elaborate record that could easily have been a single- takes place on the day of his coronation.
What does all this have to do with Trump? The President-elect has been in score-settling mode on social media, eviscerating his political and media enemies in a manner in keeping with the lyrics of Delusion of Grandeur which was the B-side of the Pet Shop Boys’ 1997 single Red Letter Day.
Trump’s Twitter style only reinforces that the 45th President is a Beltway outsider with no political experience. The Presidency might change his presidential modus operandi but for now he intends to rule on his own forthright terms.
If the last year has been anything to go by, the 45th President embraces, rather than eschews, divisiveness and recrimination as does the Pope in Delusions of Grandeur: “Give devotion, dedication, celebration not some cheap charade/ and I’ll rule the world/ All of these delusions of grandeur/ because they said ‘We don’t understand you’/ and I want revenge.”
Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant who wrote the lyrics once said: “It’s a fantasy about how you hate people because they’ve treated you badly, and so you want to rule the world and get revenge on them.” (President Obama’s comments about Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner springs to mind.)
The similarities with the Trump victory grow in the second verse with a description of the overwhelming media attention that gets lavished on the controversial ruler. There’s even a reference to Trump’s bête noire CNN: “In audience I receive the media’s pleas/They kiss my ring in interviews on bended knees/ In victory I’m magnanimous and charming when/ I speak exclusively at length to CNN.”
Trump himself would likely not approve of the connection since Tennant also said: “The person this song is about is actually a fascist…fantasizing about being crowned king of the world.”
Delusions of Grandeur’s closing lyrics are: “Ring the bells, tell everyone/Revolution can be fun.”
Time will tell…
