https://youtu.be/RVk8gjj5-9U
This Christmas, if you plan on watching the 1964 Rankin-Bass Animation studio classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with family, it’ll be helpful to interrupt constantly to point out how much it retroactively works as an allegory for the Trump movement. At its core, Rudolph is a tale of alienation and ostracism for being different – but that once you prove yourself to be situationally useful to the regime, your differences are actually in fact a good thing – well for the time being at least. Who knows if tomorrow will work out.
Born with a bizarre deformity, Rudolph is shunned by his peers. Even Santa Claus, a man who’s supposed to love everyone, thinks he’s a freak and doesn’t want anything to do with him – this though Rudolph is the son of a valuable member of his team, Donner. Santa even strongly implies it’s Donner’s fault that Rudolph was born that way. In the end though, when Santa needs help navigating through a blizzard to make his deliveries on Christmas Eve, Rudolph’s nose proves valuable to him, and all those horrible things Santa said are forgotten.
So Rudolph is kind of like Vernon Jones, the Black Democrat Georgia state lawmaker who swore an oath of allegiance to Trump – which was important, because Jones helped white MAGA voters feel like they’re not actually racists – because how could Trump be racist if a Black Dem supports him?
More parallels abound. Hermey, the homosexual elf who hates building toys and wants to be a dentist, is cast out of Santa’s workshop for being different. Yet when the abominable snowman threatens to annihilate everyone and every thing at the North Pole, Herbie’s nascent dental skills save the day when he removes all of the monster’s teeth and tames him with the help of alcoholic prospector Yukon Cornelius.
Hermey is a lot like #WalkAway founder Brandon Straka, a homosexual unemployed hairdresser from New York City, whose sexual orientation helpfully distracts from the Anti-LGBT policies of the Trump Administration and Vice President Mike Pence in particular. How could Trump hate gays if a gay like Straka is a fan?
The Abominable Snowman himself is basically QAnon fandom. How could a vicious, violent monster be so bad if he’s going to help you out and put the star on top of the workshop Christmas tree?
Most of all, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, this real life parallel also has a happy ending: Now that Trump failed to get himself reelected, all of his loyal turncoats can now head to The Island of Misfit Toys, shunned as freaks for the rest of their lives. They’ll never be useful to anyone. Ever.