Similarities Between the Second Trump Presidency and a Zombie Invasion

In 1985’s Day of the Dead, a former soldier, renamed as “Bub” (Sherman Howard), reacts strongly to walkman head phones.

I just finished reading The Living Dead by George A. Romero and David Kraus (Romero’s last zombie creation).
This novel was published in 2020, about three years after George Romero’s death.
Romero’s agent (Chris Roe). and Suzanne Desrocher (George Romero’s wife). asked David Kraus to finish the novel soon after Romero died.
[This piece contains spoilers.]

Back story: the novelization of Dawn of the Dead* (1978) was written by George Romero and Susanna Sparrow.
Therefore, The Living Dead is the first novel by George Romero that isn’t based on a script.
John Russo wrote the 1974 novelization of Night of the Living Dead; that work was based on the 1974 screenplay, written by John Russo and George Romero.

When he died, George Romero was working on a zombie film in which the living dead drove cars. Its' working title was Road of the Dead.

Five interesting facts about Romero’s series of zombie films, versus his novel:

(A) The novel shifts the zombie timeline to the early 2020’s. In the novel (just as in 2007’s Diary of the Dead), there are cell phones, computers, and the internet.

(B) Romero regretted the implication in Night of the Living Dead (1968) that a Venus probe produced the zombies. Shortly before his death, he asserted: “No one ever would, ever could, figure out why zombies came into existence.”

(C) Animals aren’t zombified in the Romero films, but they are in the novel. Certain species of mammals begin to prey on humans, but not on each other.

(D) Zombies have a time limit, roughly fifteen years. After that time period, the living dead slow down, decay, and begin to fall apart.

(E) If certain zombies have clear objectives that they want to fulfill, prior to becoming the living dead, then they will still do these actions after they become zombified (in both the films and the novel).

By reading the coauthor’s note, I learned that while The Living Dead might not exactly be what Romero would have written (had he lived a few more healthy years), Kraus tried to be as close as possible.
I think that if Romero had survived, the novel would have been much, much longer.

The novel is extremely gory, a bit uneven, and sometimes it’s even unclear.
The novel does give us George Romero’s last stories on zombies.
Since I’ve been fascinated with Romero’s work from 1968’s Night of the Living Dead through 2009’s Survival of the Dead, it was a good read.

The zombie version of Cholo DeMora (John Leguizamo) avenges himself on the owner of Fiddler’s Green, Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), in 2005’s Land of the Dead.

George Romero (1940-2017) was a Bronx-born film-maker, and the father of the modern zombie myth.
Because of his name, I had high hopes that Romero was a fellow Italian-American.
However, I was mistaken.
Although Romero was the grandchild of immigrants, his ancestry was half Lithuanian and half Spanish.
He became a citizen of Canada in 2009.

One of the things I liked most about the Romero films was his liberal sensibility.
In Night of the Living Dead, the hero is a black man who summons up the strength to help others, while the villain is a selfish, white “family man.”
In Day of the Dead, military grunts decide that they don’t want to work for the common good.
In Land of the Dead, selfish millionaires get their comeuppance.
It was obvious that Romero was a liberal from his first films.
Anyone who didn’t understand this, was just looking for a gore fest.

Avid zombie shoppers wandering a mall in 1978’s Dawn of the Dead.

In Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth, Kim Paffenroth analyzes the film Land of the Dead. Paffenroth says,* in the chapter on that film, that the villain of the piece, Kaufman (played by Dennis Hopper):

Based his entire kingdom [Fiddler’s Green] on ignoring others’ rights and acting like a terrorist and a criminal. . . a potent and uncomfortable indictment of the United States, for all the disenfranchised and exploited on which we base our affluent and wasteful lifestyle.

Romero and Kraus end The Living Dead in Toronto, Canada, the city where Romero died at the age of 77.
Many of the main characters, who we’ve followed in Acts One and Two of the 635-page book, meet up in Toronto, in Act Three.
Surprisingly, they come to the conclusion that they shouldn’t have spent years killing the living dead after all.
The readers are left with a question: Are human beings really worth the attention of God? 

Leader zombie Big Daddy (Eugene Clark) pumping gas, in 2005’s Land of the Dead. 

The American “heroes” of The Living Dead novel are a very diverse group:

• a black high school student who lives with her father in a trailer park, and is very skilled with a bow and arrow
• a near retirement Japanese-American master helmsman on an U.S. aircraft carrier (who happens to be gay)
• a blonde female autopsy technician in San Diego, who has a crush on her Latino boss
• a famous male TV newscaster known as “The Face.”
• a neurodivergent female statistician who works for the Government in D.C.

The “villain” of The Living Dead novel is an ex-movie producer called Richard Lindof.
He reminds me of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” because he comes from money, he limps, plus he’s rather ugly.
(However, “limping Lindof” appears in very few pages.)
The true villain of The Living Dead novel is human nature itself!

By the end of The Living Dead novel, one group (led by our heroes) is willing to compromise their own safety, lock up their guns, and live peacefully next to the dying zombies.
The group comes into conflict with another group (led by Lindof) that goes for chaos, and behaving viciously.
Mammals, like rats and dogs, become zombified.
However, the zombie mammals only attack humans, not each other.
Miraculously, one of the main characters turns into zombie hybrid.
Her eyes are not clouded white, she speaks, and she’s retained her pre-zombie personality.

The similarities between the second Trump presidency and a zombie invasion are the following:

1. We live in a state of fear. In Romero’s universe, we’re worried whether zombified rats will bite us while we sleep. In our universe, we wonder whether Trump will invade Venezuela or Nigeria.
2. We’re participating in a battle between a desire for the common good, and watching out only for our own lives and prosperity.
3. There are two sides and they don’t understand each other; each side believes they’re the prey of others out to do them wrong.

*The sections I quote from Gospel of the Living Dead, by Kim Paffenroth (Baylor University Press, 2006) carry footnotes that reference Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare, a film director and college professor, who reviewed the film Land of the Dead in the Journal of Religion and Film (2005, Volume 9, Issue 2).