Beau Elliot
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In the Year of the Selfie, Donald Trump reigns and rains, vanquishing all who look askance at him.

“That guy there, with the notebook and glasses, he looked askance at me,” the  Trumpster shouts. “Throw him out of this auditorium right now; he’s one of those media types who never show how packed the auditoriums are, with their askance glances. And this place is packed to the gills.”

“Explains why the place is called the Carp Palace,” the guy with the notebook and glasses says. “At least in one sense.”

“C’mon, you,” the brown-shirted security guard says, grabbing his arm in a vise grip. “You are so out of here. You can’t look askance at our next president.”

“Askance, askance,” the crowd shouts gleefully as the brown-shirted guard leads him away, not so gently brushing his glasses off his face, and the crowd joyfully crushes the glasses into bits that nuclear physicists and anthropologists might study one day to learn about these days, the Year of the Selfie. 

“Look askance now,” the guard says.

“Askance, askance,” the crowd shouts even more strongly.

“When I’m president,” the Trumpster thunders, “all askance-looking people will be stopped at the border and not let in. We’ll build a wall that will make the Berlin Wall look like kiddies’ putty.”

In the Year of the Selfie, Trump thunders supreme.

He is the Selfie.

And as the Selfie, he imports and imparts his Selfie-ness. I was never for [the war in Iraq]. I was against it — before it ever started, I was against it. And I was against it from before 2004. I was against the war in Iraq, and I was against it for years, the Selfie proclaims from the summit of Mount Donald, a newly discovered volcano in the wilds of Manhattan.

Nay, the naysayers say, looking askance. You weren’t against the war, you supported the war in public statements.

It matters not. The Selfie has spoken. The naysayers are mere askancers. And we all know what happens to mere askancers.

I don’t play by the traditional rules, the Selfie proclaims from the mount of the previously undiscovered, etc. I’m self-funding my campaign, which maybe has an impact on them [the media].

Nay, the naysayers whisper, realizing they are mere askancers. Something like 25 percent of your funding came from outside sources. But whispering, whispering.

Nay, thunders the Selfie. Throw the askancers out of the country and send them to France, where they say nay all the time and eat Gallic to boot. Pay no attention to the Super PAC man behind the curtain. 

In the future, philosophers will contemplate the Year of the Selfie, much like Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer, only with pipes. The pipes, of course, will not be filled with tobacco but with oregano, because scientists will have discovered that smoking oregano does not lead to any ill health effects but might lead to a bad affect.

Philosophers won’t care. They will only be interested in contemplating the bust of Selfie. The dens of philosophy will smell like dens of pizzerias.

In the Year of the Selfie.

And what rough beast, his year come square at last, slouches toward Cleveland to be borne?

(Apologies to W.B. Yeats)