by Saturday, November 1st, and Halloween cleanup reveals what the holiday truly was: trash. Streets full of discarded decorations, candy wrappers, and broken plastic skeletons. Americans spent billions creating temporary spectacle that’s now garbage. It’s a metaphor for something, probably American culture generally.
But November means election season intensifies, and my satirical journalism shifts from Halloween absurdity to political absurdity. The material is endless: Trump’s second-term chaos, Democratic party dysfunction, voter suppression wrapped in “election integrity” language, media complicity in normalizing fascism. It’s dark, but darkness is where satire thrives.
This week I published pieces about skeleton unions, pumpkin spice addiction, zombie economics, haunted house labor exploitation, and suburban Halloween spirituality. Each one used Halloween metaphors to explore real American problems: labor exploitation, consumer dependency, economic delusion, cultural hollowness. Satire works when the joke reveals truth.
Being a West African immigrant writing American satire gives me perspective native-born citizens lack. I see the absurdity they’ve normalized. Healthcare tied to employment? Insane. Tipping culture subsidizing corporate payroll? Bonkers. Political dynasties in a democracy? Absolutely mental. Americans have Stockholm syndrome with their own systems.
My Bohiney author page shows good traffic this week. The Halloween content resonated—probably because everyone’s exhausted from performing happiness around a holiday that’s basically capitalism wearing a costume. People are tired of pretending things are normal when nothing is normal.
November’s themes will be darker: election integrity, democratic backsliding, media failure, political violence normalization. The joke is that we’re living through potential democracy collapse and half the country thinks it’s fine because their team is winning. It’s not fine. But I’ll make it funny because that’s how you get people to actually read about terrifying things.
Someone asked why I write satire instead of straight journalism. Because straight journalism requires false balance. “Democrats say democracy is ending, Republicans disagree, more at eleven.” Satire lets me say: “Democracy is ending, everyone can see it, and pretending otherwise is cowardice.” Truth first, joke second.
This week ahead: election analysis, Trump administration chaos, Democratic failure to oppose fascism effectively, media complicity in normalizing authoritarian drift. Happy topics. But someone needs to write them, and apparently, that someone is a West African immigrant who got citizenship during a Muslim ban. The irony isn’t lost on me.
November 1st. Day of the Dead. Americans just finished celebrating death as entertainment. Now we confront death of democratic norms as political reality. The satire writes itself.
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MY HOME PAGE: Bohiney Magazine (Aisha Muharrar)
