The Imperial Presidency, Part 2

[Labster]

One of the things that I keep thinking about, because I'm a writer in ManaChara over on the other forum, is the relationship between fiction and reality.  Since we keep incorporating fictional characters in reality, the inverse question keeps being asked: How fictional is reality?

You might think that's a silly question, but it really isn't, because stories are how we understand our world.  There are deep implications about storytelling for theology, history, psychology, and of course politics.  Nationalism is essentially a form of storytelling, because nations are essentially grandfalloons, groupings of unrelated people with a largely fictitious story about its people, barely indistinguishable from Polandball.  The only real difference between the average Hetalia fic and a Vladimir Putin rant is the level of approval for gay sex.

So it's with this background that I want to discuss this news story: Trump Amplifies Proposal To Rebrand ICE As 'NICE,' Shares Federal-Style Logo Concept.

The final book of The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, has the big bad being a organization called N.I.C.E.  And of course, they're out to use science to conquer nature, and of course death.  And they have their own forces to run a police state, led by a corrupt inner circle, which brings us neatly back to Trump's NICE.  The symbolism here is so dumb and obvious that it's too strange to be true, and too strange to be fictional.  And, like most evil plans in the real world, it's simply moronic.  So why not rename it?  That would be nice.