“The Patriot Games”: Donald Trump’s dystopia

Since the announcement that former President and 34-time convicted felon Donald Trump was running for a second term in the White House, and following his success in the election on November 5, the internet has been lively with debate over the future of human rights in America and the impact a second Trump presidency could have globally.

The Trump Administration has made many concerning claims about what the next four years will hold. There has been a significant shift towards increased promotion of patriotism and patriarchy. Throughout his campaign, Trump has promised a mass deportation of immigrants, as well as removing birth-right citizenship, which granted children born in the US automatic citizen status regardless of that of their parents. He has pledged record-breaking military funding, a full withdrawal from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Paris Climate Accord, and the abolition of the Department for Education. His plan to ostracise America from the rest of the world creates the perfect setting for a dystopian novel.

CNN reports a huge rise in dystopian fiction sales following Trump’s re-election. Books such as 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and The Handmaid’s Tale, all with themes of surveillance, censorship, and oppression, have been selling fast.

When reading through President-elect Trump’s pledges for his next term, I was struck by his proposition to introduce “The Patriot Games” for high-school athletes and its resemblance in title to The Hunger Games. The plan to introduce a competition for teens in commemoration of victory in a civil war is eerily similar (although less violent)  to, the plot of Suzanne Collins’ popular young-adult series in which 24 teens must fight to the death to entertain their oppressors. Furthermore, Trump’s attack on women’s rights through extreme and complete restriction of access to safe abortions, healthcare for pregnancy complications, and his condemnation of women who suffer miscarriages, shows his prioritisation of an unborn life over that of a woman already living. Collins presents this issue in her second book Catching Fire by showing the privileged audience of the games to be outraged by the idea of the allegedly pregnant protagonist, Katniss, competing in the arena. Despite their horror at the thought of an unborn foetus’ life being lost, the audience is shown to actively enjoy the spectacle of violent teenage death.

Trump’s assault on women’s rights through a plan to advocate for the nuclear family and traditional gender roles and to promote Christian prayer, are key themes of Margaret Atwood’s dystopia: The Handmaid’s Tale. In this novel, a male-dominated America restricts the freedom of women and forces them to bear children for the ruling class. Conversations and actions are monitored and censored – surveillance is everywhere. The Handmaid’s Tale presents an America which is no longer unimaginable to us. The improper use of religious doctrine to condition people into the belief that there is a higher justification for an oppressive social order, no longer seems so far-fetched. Promotion of traditional gender roles will begin to widen the divide between men and women and slowly reinstate the separation of public and domestic spheres back into their gendered origins.

Mona Chollet explores the systemic persecution of women in her book In Defence of Witches: Why Women are Still on Trial. Using the archetypal “witch” character, Chollet centres her discussion around the traditional stereotypes used to decide which women were secretly practising witchcraft: independent women; women who choose not to have children; and women who reject the idea that to age is a terrible thing. She examines the extent to which the same types of women are being targeted at a governmental level in society today. Chollet’s book shows that the oppression of women, although perhaps seeming less extreme than the witch-hunts of the past, is rooted in the same fears and is a continuing cycle perpetuated by patriarchal and governmental structures.

On a similar note, Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible uses the Salem Witch-Trials as a setting for Miller’s response to McCarthyism in Cold War America. The Crucible comments on the fear of otherness, the villainisation of women, and the effects of authority figures abusing religious fanaticism to maintain power.

Despite the bleakness of the societies these books discuss, they leave us hopeful and determined. Post-election, Margaret Atwood, posted on X:  “Despair is not an option.”