Trump Derangment Syndrome is not new. Peoples in all cultures have fables of wild men, mad monsters who inhabit the edges of where we live. Some of these are mythical, others derive from history as in today’s Germany with its nightmare dreams about Hitler or medieval Europe where there was real fear of Jews stealing virgins to make blood for matzos. Ta-Nehisi Coates. the great African American author, has written about hos own dreams about slavery and slavers in his new book, “The Water Dancer.”
Bakwas (sometimes “bokwus“, “bookwus” or “bukwis“) is one of these supernatural spirits. We do not know the original source of this myth but among the Kwakwaka’wakw people of coastal British Columbia Buk’Was is often called “wild man of the woods.”
Buk’Was eats ghost food out of cockle shells and tries to offer this to living humans who are stranded in the woods, in order to bring them over to the ghost world. The followers of Trump eat chick-a-fil and big macs in the same way.
Like in the Trump Derangement Syndrome afflicting the United States, the Kwakwaka’wakw warn that human’s who to eat this food, turn into beings like the bakwas. We call our afflcted “Trumpies.”
Like Trump, Buk’Was lives in a magical house. The spirits of the drowned congregate there like GOP poltiicans or foreign dignatories in a Trump hotel.
In some myths Buk’Was is described as the consort of dzunukwa, and the father of her children. He has many children who are lesser versions of himself.
Ghost beings similar to Buk’Was belong to the cultures of other Northwest Coast tribes. The Tlingit have kushtaka, or land-otter people; the Haida have gagit, drowned spirit ghosts; the Nuu-chah-nulth have pukubts, a name which seems etymologically related to the Kwakiutl bakwas, as is the Tsimshian ba’wis.
We have Trump.
What the writer has left out is another kind of American derangement. I know who will take this states electoral college votes (unless Texas and Florida play a fast one, and we get to see how dedicated the true believers of the national vote are). Whoever the Democratic candidate is. This is true of New York, California and a number of coastal states. Equally true is the Republican lock no matter the Republican running. Seems neither party wants voters to be truly independent minded even when it could help their candidate. As if we were the other party candidate could be better. There is a derangement in the current two party system. Heck we will not even vote for a favorite Washingtonian…hoping the Congress just might go with our choice.