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Remaking Democracy in America (Stairway Press, 2018) revisits the blog I posted on September 10, 2015 explaining why Donald Trump was going to be the next president if Hillary Clinton was the Democratic nominee. When the blog first appeared, I was crucified for taking Trump seriously. Fourteen months later, Trump was elected for the reasons I spelled out. People still ignore my analysis of current politics. So, I write primarily to engage, entertain, and educate people in less straightforward ways. From October 2016 to May 2017, I wrote fourteen short works I call Semolina Pilchards, after a line in John Lennon’s “I Am the Walrus.” Each character with a ridiculous name lives an absurd, postmodern life in which the use of language is more important than what the language is being used for. This is the fourth one published. Most editors turn them down for the sole reason that they are not what short fiction is supposed to be. Meanwhile, most critics still don’t take Trump seriously, because he doesn’t conform to what politicians and world leaders are supposed to do. They can’t get past the fact that he was elected precisely because he is a Semolina Pilchard, a nonsense creation designed to baffle people who expect to find rational meaning in everything. No one just accepts he is what he is.

Bear Kosik