As the world hurtles towards a sci-fi future of Artificial Intelligence (AI), driverless cars and hyperloops, desperate Americans are seeking ancient and mysterious ways to get back their rights.

At midnight last Friday one group of witches cast a spell on Potus, not to harm President Donald Trump, but as a purely “self-defence measure” to help recover their power as normal people.

“So many of us have been overwhelmed by the assaults on civil liberties, immigrants and the environment,” says a member of the group, hoping that the hocus-pocus will stop Trump from further harming others.

This group which includes A-lister and Baroque Pop singer Lana Del Ray, has its own Facebook page, with a picture of the singer looking kind of creepy. It says the spell will be performed on the time of every waning crescent moon, (That means covens will be meeting again on March 26, April 24 and May 23), until Trump is removed from office and he leaves the White House once and for all.

The ingredients for the ritual do not call for a lizard’s tail and other horrible stuff, but only an unflattering photograph of Trump, a baby carrot (maybe because of the orange colour), salt, a candle, a feather and a Tower Tarot card.

Apparently some Americans have gone completely out of their mind as they do not know what else to do as their democratically-elected president is slowly taking away their democratic rights and is very likely to take the world to the brink of nuclear war by mocking everyone else on this planet and vowing to expand America’s nuclear capabilities.

Incidentally, Nostradamus, a 16th Century French philosopher who foresaw disastrous events such as the rise of Hitler, says in one of his quatrains, “The false trumpet concealing madness will cause Byzantium to change its laws.”

The soothsayer’s fans say that the “Trumpet” is Trump and Byzantium is the US. That ancient Greek state was once an attraction for immigrants from around the world, just as the US is an attraction for immigrants in the modern world today. Nostradamus also predicts that Trump’s policies will set the path for a worldwide recession.

I have never heard of witches in India, though there are some people who are said to help you get rid of the “evil eye”. That evil eye is everywhere as people become jealous of your success, your money, your health and your car.

So motorists hang good luck charms from the rearview mirror before driving off into the crowded roads, good-looking children are daubed with a black, charcoal dot so the evil eye will see that first instead of the pretty or a handsome face.

Politicians and diapers

Whenever important municipal elections are held, politicians seek the help of palm readers who look into their palms and see great victories ahead.

But I have never heard of people seeking the help of witches to cast a spell on a crazy elected official so that he is removed from office.

According to the election commissioner, once an Indian politician gets elected, it is a life-long career. When the politician gets old and doddering you see him sleeping in Parliament, and finally his son or daughter takes over, and so it goes on.

But as someone wisely said, politicians, like diapers, need to be changed regularly. If the spell works and as Trump skulks away one dark night, a cleansing ceremony will have to be performed at the Oval House so that such evil never again returns.

I am not sure if they will need to place pictures of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney at strategic points in the White House for a couple of days, but hopefully Trump will vanish into the everglades of Florida, playing golf as alligators snap their teeth behind him.

Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ mahmood_saberi.