Last night I read The Cockroach a novella by Ian McEwan where a cockroach undergoes a purposeful, though Kafkaesque transformation into the British Prime Minister. It is a lot of light-hearted fun.

McEwan’s novel got me thinking about potential fictional representations of America’s president and those thoughts crashed into Josh Marshall’s observations about the behavior of post-impeachment Trump, a man who seems beyond all epiphany.

Which brought me to the moment of great change in the last part of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens:

“Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!”

How would that end, were his Scrooge our Trump? I see: “Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!”

“‘TOTAL EXONERATION!’ cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.”

What other ending could there be?