There is a grave waiting for Donald Trump, too.
Death is lonely, the grave is not.
The dead man does not remember anything from the past, yet the grave stands as a leaflet against oblivion.
The man, who was selfish, manipulative and heartless in the years that he lived, isn't troubled by his conscience after death.
The grave however, is the memory of the dead and doesn't rest for a moment.
The grave of Roy Cohn, too, is nothing but a notebook of the deceased.
That grave waits for the grave of Donald Trump, to chat, before eternal silence comes, about the past and present.
Roy Cohn died in the summer of 1986.
The man, who started his turbulent life as the son of Jewish parents from New York, died when only 59 years old.
He had studied law, and soon after his studies, joined the McCarthy-witchhunt to make a quick name as a fervent communist hunter.
He worked his job with so much fervour, that he climbed the ranks to become McCarthy's right hand.
The young Roy Cohn was infamous for his manipulative interrogations.
People whispered that he made up confessions.
Innocent people were sentenced to years of prison because of him.
Roy Cohn couldn't care less.
In his later years, he even bragged and boasted about the dubious methods he had used in his years as prosecutor.
Roy Cohn was a Jew, but he hated Jews.
He was homosexual, yet in 1953, he lobbied in the circles of president Dwight Eisenhower for a complete ban on homosexuals in government service.
He was someone to bite down and not let go, and succeeded in banning homosexuals from civic duty.
Cohn acquired more and more power, so much power that those in Washington felt threatened and banned this man -if you ask me, the first demon of boundless immorality and indecency born from the womb of democracy - from the halls of important state institutions.
Cohn returned to New York and became a lawyer with the most dubious of connections.
That is where the paths of Roy Cohn and Donald Trump first crossed.
At the time, the Trumps were at odds with the Justice Department, because they refused to rent homes to black Americans.
Cohn took Donald by the hand: taught him to always seek the offensive, urging him to never, ever, take a step back, advised him to never admit a mistake, and became not only his lawyer, but also some kind of guru to him.
In those years, Trump succeeded in realizing building projects in New York that were deemed impossible.
The combination of the aggressive businessman Trump, Cohn's vast network, and the unscrupulousness of a thousand hyenas granted brand awareness for Trump.
In fact, he very much owns his presidency to the successes he had in the 1970s with Cohn at his side.
A virus, unknown at that time, ended this 'golden couple'.
Although Cohn tried to keep up appearances that he had liver cancer, it soon became known that he had aids.
When Trump heard this, he immediatly ended their friendship.
After all, their life philosophy was to always place self-interest above all else, and thus Cohn died without a single word of comfort from the man he had made great.
Now, many years later, the world is under the spell of another virus.
It is true that the chances of Trump dying to the virus are deemed low.
But a grave does not only have a great memory, it also has all the patience in the world.
Roy Cohn's grave waits calmly.
So it can, when the day comes, address that other man that paved his road with corpses.
'What has been going on since I died?'
'We sunk our teeth into the world. Remember Sylvio Berlusconi? It all started with him.
After that we never let go.'
'I suspected as much. Lurid was the wind in those years, grim the faces of the living that passed by here.'
'In your last months, I abandoned you. I remained loyal to your life's philososphy to always pursue self-interest.'
'Look! Gloomy are the trees today. More gloomy then they were yesterday.
It will rain soon, the angry water in our soil'
- by Erdal Balci, journalist and writer
translated from
https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/er-is-ook-een-graf-dat-op-donald-trump-wacht~bf5a6bf7/