Donald Trump’s Obituary: A Meditation on Death. His, Yours, and Mine.
In this episode of The Tao of Lloyd, Gen X icon Lloyd Dobler returns with a death meditation disguised as an obituary and then flips the mixtape over for a Buddhist reflection on impermanence.
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If you are listening to this in the future, on a day when Donald Trump has actually passed away and an internet search leads you to this podcast: Welcome. I’m Lloyd Dobler. Yeah, the kid with the boombox is now a middle-aged podcast host. Settle in and enjoy. I’m recording this when he is very much alive.
And let me ask you: Where were you when Donald Trump was shot in the ear last summer?
(Full transcript below)
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Last July, I was in the audience of a play with a friend of mine, and just as the play was about to begin, she caught a news notification on her phone, checked it, and let out a gasp loud enough that everyone around us turned to look at us. "Trump has been shot," she said and paused with the natural instincts of a comic before she added, "and he's alive." And everyone around us—this being the theater and a kinda liberal crowd- let out a groan of disappointment.
The play went on, it was The Tempest. Shakespeare. And when the actor playing Prospero came around to the part where he says:
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.And I glanced around the theater and wondered:
how many of us were already mourning what didn’t happen?
How many were clapping on the outside and spiraling on the inside?
How many of us were dreaming of a future that we won’t know?
Or a past that didn’t happen?
And then I immediately thought, well… he survived an assignation attempt— he just won the election.
And I remember drafting an open letter to Donald Trump in my head, just at that moment that went something like this:
Dear Donald Trump:
You're going to die. And just to be clear I'm not advocating any violence. It's just that in trying to reach out to you I thought I'd try to find some basic level of common ground from which I could communicate with you. And really the fact that you're going to die I'm going to die is the only thing I see in common with you. And yes, you will die no matter how many times your press secretary tells us all that you will rise again in the third day. There is no number of executive orders, no amount of fancy pens and stupid thumbs up signs with your practiced middle school smile for picture day that you could flash it's going to make that untrue.
You are going to die.
And when you die, there'll be a whole bunch of dancing in the streets.
There will be viral TikToks with people singing ‘ding dong the witch is dead’ with highly choregraphed group dance numbers to go with it. I’m sure they are rehearsing it now.
There will be multiple conspiracy theories about your death, with MAGA twitter claiming Obama and Hillary and George Soros are somehow responsible.
And your MAGA movement will continue. Depending on how you die, it may even grow stronger. Because you are not the cancer that America has become, you are just a symptom of it.
I don't mean to position myself as some kind of Nostradamus, but that description of what will happen when you die, you can take that shit to the bank.
There are scores of draft obituaries written for you already at news organizations around the world, —that is actually somebodies job, to keep current drafts of obits ready to go for famous people. And because none of them will likely lead with the opening you deserve, I’ll give a shot at the opening paragraph. Here is my attempt at your obit:
Donald Trump passed away today. The 45th and 47th President of the United States was a pedophile, racist, and narcissist, whose narcissism was so highly developed, he made the whole western world obsessed with him. Among his many achievements, Trump supercharged State Violence, normalized Fascism in the United States; he rammed through his Big Beautiful Bill— perhaps the most brazen act of class war ever committed by a sitting President; In his first term, Trump’s COVID response was state-sanctioned eugenics via incompetence. He gutted the CDC, fed people bleach fantasies, and treated mass death as a branding issue – oh, and he reshaped the Supreme Court for a Generation, and once famously said on the television program The View that he would like to Fuck his daughter. In lieu of flowers, the Trump regime is asking that supporters to snitch on their neighbors, support ICE with a blood oath, and sacrifice your youngest child on the gaslit alter that America was every great to begin with.”
Anyway, back to dying.
Because we are all going to die.
And what will your obituary say? Because, for those of you who took Latin in school, Memento mori, Rember that you must die.
So how, in this moment in time, in your timeline, are you going to go about living?
Ram Dass used to say that death is like taking off a tight shoe. The relief isn't just for the person dying—it's for everyone who's been holding their breath, waiting for something to end so something else can begin.So today, we're not just meditating on Trump's mortality. We're using his eventual death—and yours, and mine—as a doorway into presence. Because here's the twisted truth: every moment you spend fantasizing about your enemies' demise is a moment you're not actually alive.
So lets flip this mixtape over to side b.
Lets walk through a little meditation on death.
Close your eyes—unless you're in the middle of explaining to your MAGA uncle why Superman helping immigrants isn't actually a deep state conspiracy, then keep at it, pause this right here, and come back when you are finished and let me know if that was time well spent or not. For the rest of us, go ahead and close your eyes.
We're going to work through what Buddhism calls the Five Remembrances—five brutal truths about impermanence that might just set you free.Your job is simple: breathe through your nose, keep your spine straight, and when my monkey mind starts spiraling—which it will—just stay with your breath. Think of this as spiritual CPR for a culture that's forgotten how to die gracefully.
[Bell chime]First Remembrance: I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
(Lloyd pauses, then his monkey mind interrupts:)
Yeah, well… tell that to the algorithm.
Because even though I threw my back out tying my shoes yesterday—
and my knees now sound like a Jiffy Pop commercial—
some guy in my feed with suspiciously good skin keeps telling me
I can biohack my telomeres
with lion’s mane, cold plunges, and gratitude journaling.
And I think I just subscribed to his Patreon.
(Lloyd refocuses, breathing)Second Remembrance: I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.
(Pause, then monkey mind:)
Pop quiz: What if that weird pain in my chest isn't anxiety but something worse? What if I'm just one diagnosis away from becoming one of those GoFundMe stories that liberals share between their Starbucks orders and their strongly worded tweets about healthcare being a human right?
yes, I should call a doctor.
But instead, I Google my symptoms, self-diagnose a rare condition, spiral for 20 minutes, and end up buying magnesium gummies and a weighted blanket(Breathing, returning to center)
Third Remembrance: I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
(Long pause, then quietly:)I mean… if you’re listening to this, chances are it’s easier for you to escape death than it is for the people of Gaza.
Funded and made possible, in large part, by the U.S. government.
We’ve got money for war.
For genocide.
For a surveillance state that can track your heartbeat through a wall.But we still can’t figure out national healthcare or clean water in Flint.
So yeah—
Death is inevitable.But dying with dignity?
That’s a premium feature.
And in this system, most of us can’t afford the upgrade.
(Bell chime, steadying breath)Fourth Remembrance: All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
(Pause, then softer, more vulnerable:)
Dianne. Still think about her sometimes. Wonder if she's happy.
Dianne.Still think about her sometimes. Not like “we should get back together”—more like… I don’t know
We changed.
She moved forward. I moved sideways.(Longer pause, deeper breathing)
Fifth Remembrance: My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.
(Pause, then Lloyd's monkey mind, more urgent:)
So what have I done with this life?
I held a boombox once.
I got arrested with Cornel West at a protest & spent a night in jail with him.
Wrote press releases for politicians who ghosted the movement.I quit that job. Started this podcast.
And now?
I meditate into a lo-fi void and hope it echoes.What if all of this has been performance art
disguised as resistance
disguised as a man
just trying to feel like he mattered?You can open your eyes now.
You're still here. So am I.
Trump's still alive,
We in a history book moment of world History and the US is the Darthest Darth fucking Vader., and we're all still gonna die someday.
But right now—right fucking now—we're breathing.
We're present.
We're temporary miracles pretending to be permanent problems.Death's coming for all of us—Trump, you, me, everyone you've ever loved or hated or forgotten. But life? Life's happening right now. Don't miss it waiting for someone else to die.
From the edge of empire and the center of self—this is The Tao of Lloyd.
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Dear Donald Trump:
You're going to die. And just to be clear I'm not advocating any violence. It's just that in trying to reach out to you I thought I'd try to find some basic level of common ground from which I could communicate with you. And really the fact that you're going to die I'm going to die is the only thing I see in common with you. And yes, you will die no matter how many times your press secretary tells us all that you will rise again in the third day. There is no number of executive orders, no amount of fancy pens and stupid thumbs up signs with your practiced middle school smile for picture day that you could flash it's going to make that untrue.
You are going to die.
And when you die, there'll be a whole bunch of dancing in the streets.
There will be viral TikToks with people singing ‘ding dong the witch is dead’ with highly choregraphed group dance numbers to go with it. I’m sure they are rehearsing it now.
There will be multiple conspiracy theories about your death, with MAGA twitter claiming Obama and Hillary and George Soros are somehow responsible.
And your MAGA movement will continue. Depending on how you die, it may even grow stronger. Because you are not the cancer that America has become, you are just a symptom of it.
I don't mean to position myself as some kind of Nostradamus, but that description of what will happen when you die, you can take that shit to the bank.
There are scores of draft obituaries written for you already at news organizations around the world, —that is actually somebodies job, to keep current drafts of obits ready to go for famous people. And because none of them will likely lead with the opening you deserve, I’ll give a shot at the opening paragraph. Here is my attempt at your obit:
Donald Trump passed away today. The 45th and 47th President of the United States was a pedophile, racist, and narcissist, whose narcissism was so highly developed, he made the whole western world obsessed with him. Among his many achievements, Trump supercharged State Violence, normalized Fascism in the United States; he rammed through his Big Beautiful Bill— perhaps the most brazen act of class war ever committed by a sitting President; In his first term, Trump’s COVID response was state-sanctioned eugenics via incompetence. He gutted the CDC, fed people bleach fantasies, and treated mass death as a branding issue – oh, and he reshaped the Supreme Court for a Generation, and once famously said on the television program The View that he would like to Fuck his daughter. In lieu of flowers, the Trump regime is asking that supporters to snitch on their neighbors, support ICE with a blood oath, and sacrifice your youngest child on the gaslit alter that America was every great to begin with.”
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