Trumpworld and Purgatory

Donald Trump has taken offense at a United Nations resolution supporting an Equal Earth map, and in this satire by Thomas Vieregge, the response quickly escalates into imperial theater.

Togo introduced the resolution to bring the world map, traditionally based on a 1569 design, closer to geographic reality. The Equal Earth projection shows Africa at its true size, while North America, Greenland and Europe appear smaller. The satirical Trump is outraged by what is missing: no Gulf of America, no Lake America, no Trump Strait and no American Ocean.

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Where in the world is Togo? Probably somewhere beyond a hundred hills, among the Hottentots. A people of cannibals and barefooted men who want nothing more than to immigrate to the greatest and most beautiful country on God’s earth. In God’s own country: Trumpworld.

The US ambassador at the United Nations in New York, Trump’s hometown, becomes the only representative to vote against the map. The resolution wins 164 votes, with six abstentions.

The article then turns the imagined backlash into a series of threats. Trump labels the vote the work of “radical ideologues” and announces plans to withdraw his empire from the United Nations and remove the organization from New York. The world, the satire suggests, will henceforth split in two: Trumpworld, a planet revolving solely around the president, and the rest of an allegedly pitiful, miserable world, or “purgatory.”

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radical ideologues