Contra Trump
百年之后
This chapter in Contra Trump is inspired (triggered?) by Yaqi Li, a scholar, China-America watcher and essayist. After reading The Dotard State on Donald J. Trump’s Eightieth Birthday, an earlier chapter in this series, Yaqi asked:
I wonder what kind of 諡號 [posthumous name or title] we would rightfully assign to Trump?
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The title of this chapter in Contra Trump — When That Man is Dead and Gone — is a reference to a song written by Irving Berlin and Elsie Carlisle in 1941. ‘That man’ was, of course, Adolf Hitler.
In the second year of Trump 2, Berlin and Carlisle’s anti-Hitler song has enjoyed renewed popularity.
When that man is dead and gone
When that man is dead and gone
We’ll go dancing down the street
Kissing everyone we meet
When that man is dead and gone
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Post-Trump America will invariably experience a period of damnatio memoriae, when his opponents, enemies and victims will ‘condemn his memory’. The first hint of this was when Trump’s name was removed from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in mid-June 2026 under a federal court order. In line with our imperial-adjacent speculation, posthumous Trump may well be subject to 掘墓鞭屍 jué mù biān shī, ‘disinterment and violation of the corpse’. Others have speculated that the White House Ballroom may even end up as a ‘Trump Pyramid’:
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Following the death of Lindsey Graham, Republican Senator, warmonger and notorious Trump lickspittle on 12 June 2026, and given the Schrödinger’s cat-like state of Mitch McConnell, Trump’s enabler-in-chief, speculation was rife that the Grim Reaper might have a hat trick involving the president himself in store. Even the agèd Trump, aware of his despised role as global wrecker and lord of instability, reportedly remarked: ‘If something happens to me, I hope everyone will miss me.’
Meanwhile, online there has been much merry banter about the need to stuff pockets with confetti for the joyful moment when Trump breathes his last. People egg each other on to put bottles of champagne on ice and to compile Spotify lists of celebratory music, including songs like:
Permission to Dance, BTS; Good Riddance, Green Day; Fuck You, Lily Allen; Finally Free, Niall Horan; At Last, Etta James; Bye Bye Bye, NSYNC; Here Comes the Sun, The Beatles; Good Life, One Republic; Happy, Pharrell Williams, About Damn Time, Lizzo; Who’s Laughing Now, Ava Max; and, I See the Light by Mandy Moore/Zachary Levi.
Sic semper tyrannis.
— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
13 July 2026
The Men on Rushmore
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荒
‘I wonder what kind of 諡號 [posthumous name or title] we would rightfully assign to Trump?’
諡號 shì hào is a posthumous name or title assigned by the state that in one or two characters would encapsulate the legacy of a ruler or official. Posthumous names could be positive 上諡 shàng shì, neutral 中諡 zhōng shì or negative 下諡 xià shì.
My response to Yaqi Li’s playful query was to observe that the question could easily be the basis for
A delightful parlour game with scope to celebrate the inevitability of thinking of Benito Milhous Caligula (Bret Stephens’ term, one that combines Mussolini + Nixon + that most notorious member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty) as 大行皇帝 dà xíng huáng dì [a dead emperor who has yet to be bestowed with a posthumous name].
Of course, one could select a suitable 惡謚 from of the list of Chinese rulers who live on in infamy. These include：
桀、紂、厲、幽、煬、攜、荒、蕩、戾、剌、醜、繆、褊、惑、僭、誇、虛、易、願、專、縱 …
Given this list, I remarked to Yaqi that:
I rather like the capacious possibilities of 荒huāng [‘Desolation’, ‘Folly’. The only 荒王 in Chinese history was the short-lived Zhu Tan (朱檀, 1370-1390) of the Ming dynasty, a callow youth who in his quest for immortality poisoned himself with Taoist longevity drugs. His father, Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, said that his actions were nothing less than ‘absurd’ 荒誕不經 huāng dàn bù jīng.]
In late 2016, I wrote that:
‘We are already led to speculate whether, “After One Hundred Years” 百年之後, as the Chinese euphemistically call death, will the embalmed body of Trump, that Tangerine Caligula, hair in a preternatural combover, be put on display in his New York faux-Louis-XIV penthouse or at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s “Mediterranean-style” resort in Florida?’
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謚號 aside, there are delicious possibilities when it comes to 尊號 zūnhào, in which one can pile on descriptive imprecations related to the deceased. Drawing on the characteristics of a 昏君 hūn jūn, a dangerously arrogant and destructive ruler of the ilk of Donald Trump, that I listed in The Dotard State. Students of contemporary America can now tick off the 昏君 hūn jūn checklist:
- 偏聽偏信與閉塞言路
- 荒淫無度與沈溺享樂
- 窮兵黷武與橫徵暴斂
- 任人唯親與權臣亂政
- 濫殺無辜與忠奸不分
As for Trump’s 尊號 zūnhào, I suggested the following:
偏信閉塞荒淫沈溺黷武暴斂任親忠奸損皇帝
And here, the tell is in the tail. The list of defining characteristics of the dead president above is rounded out with a temple name 廟號 miào hào, that is a one-word term by which Trump will be known in perpetuity.
I suggested to Yaqi Li that dead Trump’s temple name should be 損皇帝 sǔn huángdì, that is, The Emperor of Depletion, Damage, or Diminution.
[Note: For our observations on the numerous names bestowed on Xi Jinping, China’s party-state-army supremo, see Emperor One Direction in Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium.]
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WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump boasted on Monday that his funeral will draw a “much bigger crowd” than that of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“The so-called Ayatollah, who was a loser and a terrible person, got a pathetic turnout for his funeral,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “My funeral will draw MILLIONS!”
Claiming that “nobody cares” about Khamenei’s funeral, Trump said he expects the turnout at his funeral to set records, noting, “Every day, people say to me, ‘Sir, I can’t wait for that day to come.’”
Over the weekend, Trump’s July 4 festivities in the nation’s capital drew billions of algae.
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