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Daily Shouts

Dumpty’s Dream

— By John Lithgow | September 27, 2021

Photograph by Probal Rashid/Getty

At the crack of dawn in Washington, first Wednesday of the year,

The sky was blue, the sun was bright, the air was crystal clear.

Like a child on Christmas morning, Dumpty quivered with excitement

At the prospect of a day of demagogical incitement.

A plot was taking shape that day, transcending all his dramas.

He rehearsed it pacing up and down in slippers and pajamas.

Padding to a window with a view of the Ellipse,

He whispered “Stop the Steal” through a pair of trembling lips.

Elsewhere in the capital, responding to his call,

Thousands of his followers were spoiling for a brawl.

Dumpty’s private infantry of goth conventioneers

Had mustered all its forces to secure him four more years.

The night before, they’d gathered for a warm-up demonstration

To stoke the glowing embers for the next day’s conflagration.

Their cheers were heard for hours on end throughout the dark metropolis

For pardoned felons Roger Stone, Mike Flynn, and Papadopoulos.

By 8 a.m. they hit the streets, prepared for open battle.

They filled their lungs with frosty air and roared like angry cattle.

Armed with helmets, baseball bats, bear spray, and chest protectors,

They railed against the verdict of the College of Electors.

As Dumpty gave his makeup and his hair a final glance,

His rabble-rousers crowded the Ellipse’s broad expanse.

They evoked a mini-Woodstock in a ghastly new edition:

The Summer of Love refashioned as the Winter of Sedition.

They’d assembled there to topple an election they reviled

At a rally Dumpty promised them on Twitter “will be wild!”

The potus and his entourage were ushered to a tent

Where he watched with glee the speeches at the start of the event:

Mo Brooks and Amy Kremer and that ravenous Akita,

The fierce and fiery Guilfoyle, reënacting her Evita;

Ken Paxton, Donald, Jr., and that addlepated wombat

Rudy Giuliani with his call for “trial by combat.”

Drunk on fake conspiracy and manufactured facts,

The hopped-up herd bought every word of Dumpty’s opening acts.

Primed for demagoguery and energized by rage,

They howled in adoration when the potus took the stage.

What followed was a tirade of interminable duration

With Dumpty spewing cataracts of rank disinformation.

Rehashing all his paranoid and solipsistic themes,

He took boastfulness and grievance to Wagnerian extremes.

The multitude was mirthful when he aimed his brash artillery

At Oprah, Stacey Abrams, Hunter Biden, Joe, and Hillary.

But the raucous celebration turned malignant and unpent

When Dumpty voiced his doubts about his own Vice-President.

Ten minutes from the rally, in an easterly direction,

Congress sat to certify the national election.

Thus Dumpty’s words had introduced a note of dark suspense:

The tally would be rendered by Vice-President Mike Pence.

Dumpty since November had defied his certain fate,

Hammering officialdom in every crucial state.

By now his only option was to grasp at final straws,

Beseeching Pence to flout the law and put the vote on pause.

The crowd contained a faction of maniacal dissenters:

Oath Keepers, Texas Freedom Force, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters.

As Dumpty’s speech meandered, leaving no one unmaligned,

They bolted for the Capitol with murder on their mind.

potus finished with a vision of “our brightest days before us,”

And the crowd responded fervently in unironic chorus.

On the heels of the militias, in the grips of Dumpty’s thrall,

A many-headed monster lumbered eastward down the Mall.

Post-rally, Dumpty hurried to his White House habitation,

His orange face the picture of postcoital consummation.

He settled in the Oval Office just in time to see

The fruits of all his labors airing live on Fox TV.

In the Capitol, electoral proceedings had begun.

Outside, the western barricades were breached and overrun.

The assembled legislators were completely unaware

As Mike Pence defied the potus and ascended to the chair.

Though the outer doors were guarded by the Capitol Police,

They saw their scanty numbers wouldn’t long maintain the peace.

They surveyed with ashen faces, surging forth in their direction,

A seething, swelling human sea of angry insurrection.

The horde streamed up the granite steps past every cop and sentry,

Smashing every windowpane to gain illegal entry.

Desperate calls to activate the waiting National Guard

Were greeted by the Pentagon with baffling disregard.

Once inside, the raging tide continued to advance,

Shaking the Rotunda with their caterwauling chants.

The senators and congressmen, in panic and confusion,

Were hustled from their chambers and sequestered in seclusion.

Ramping up the anarchy with cries of jubilation,

The rioters ran roughshod through the temple of the nation.

Capitol security, so grievously outmanned,

Fought in vain through stress and pain to make a final stand.

At the White House, Dumpty revelled in this mutinous typhoon

Like a happy toddler bingeing on his favorite cartoon.

Throwing fuel upon the fire, he sent out a peevish tweet

Attacking Pence’s willingness to certify defeat.

The effect on the protesters was ferocious and galvanic,

Their chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” becoming murderous and manic.

The dogs of war were baying, bloody chaos was let loose,

And high above the rabble rose a scaffold and a noose.

Minority chief McCarthy, in his desperate hour of need,

Got Dumpty on the phone and begged his boss to intercede.

Though Kevin was by habit Dumpty’s deferential drudge,

Despite his frantic plea, the sodden potus wouldn’t budge.

Lounging in the Oval, Dumpty sipped a Diet Coke

And with slack self-satisfaction, cracked a condescending joke:

“Well, Kev,” he said, and wiped a blob of ketchup off his shoe,

“It looks like this election has them more upset than you.”

With the melee grabbing half the planet’s horrified attention,

Dumpty’s inner circle staged a nervous intervention.

They timidly suggested that the potus might release

A Presidential order to stand down and keep the peace.

Dumpty grudgingly consented in a sour and surly sulk.

He polished off his Burger King and hoisted up his bulk,

Then stood before a camera and addressed the angry mob,

Concealing his delight at how they’d carried out their job.

In its paper-thin hypocrisy, his video epistle

Was a minute-long rendition of his usual dog whistle.

Between the lines, he signalled “voter fraud” with wordless clarity

And offered up “We love you” with transparent insincerity.

But Dumpty’s words, alas, were far too little and too late.

The damage was inflicted, and the horse had left the gate.

On the Hill, the mobs receded, their destructive passion spent,

Convinced that they’d exulted their exalted President.

The Capitol lay desecrated, vandalized, and scarred

At the tragic late arrival of the luckless National Guard.

They beheld the bludgeoned victims of the brutalizing throng,

Soldiers in a war against a monumental wrong.

At 8 p.m., like hostages delivered from a cage,

Congress reassembled in a state of righteous rage.

After hiding out for hours in political perdition,

They were stubbornly intent upon accomplishing their mission.

Straining on past midnight, they ignored the passing hours,

Their heavy lift a peaceful shift of governmental powers.

Across the floor at ten to four, at last the vote was called:

Joe Biden, a new President, was finally installed.

At dawn, the Congress stumbled out past stacks of trash and rubble,

Riding out a day and night of terror, toil, and trouble.

Though haunted by the echo of the long-departed crowd,

Our beleaguered old democracy was bloodied but unbowed.

In the White House, Dumpty thundered after thirty sleepless hours,

Raging at the loss of all his autocratic powers.

But his fury sputtered unexpressed for lack of a transmitter:

His ravings had been muted by his banishment from Twitter.

He staggered to his bedroom where he crumpled in a heap.

His adrenaline expended, he was desperate for sleep.

His head, beset by tortured thoughts, was pounding like a drum,

But, when soothing sleep descended, Dumpty dreamed of things to come.

He dreamed that Democrats would pass Impeachment No. 2

For inciting insurrection and a plotted palace coup;

That a handful of Republicans would fearlessly stand by them,

But that Dumpty, once acquitted, would completely crucify them;

That McCarthy, who’d exhibited a modicum of spine,

Would travel down to truckle at the Mar-a-Lago shrine;

That McConnell, after slamming Dumpty on the Senate floor,

Said he’d absolutely vote for him in 2024.

potus dreamed he’d be an absentee at Joe’s Inauguration,

The fourth of only four throughout the history of the nation.

Despite his courtroom belly flops, he dreamed he wouldn’t quit

Since Joe’s Administration wouldn’t ever be legit.

He dreamed that he’d fall silent in his tenure’s aftermath,

Lying low at Mar-a-Lago to devise his future path.

With a keynote speech at cpac, he’d regain his strident voice

And prove that he remained his party’s overwhelming choice.

He dreamed of three combative years, a struggle for survival,

Stirring anger, stoking fears, and smashing every rival.

He dreamed that in the end he would ascend to seventh heaven:

He’d win the White House once again, as potus 47!

— This excerpt is drawn from “A Confederacy of Dumptys: Portraits of American Scoundrels in Verse,” by John Lithgow, out next month from Chronicle Prism. John Lithgow is an actor. He has written nine children’s picture books and a memoir, “Drama: An Actor’s Education.”

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