In the New York Times last week, the columnist and reliable generator of mirth David Brooks imagined a conversation between a Democrat and a Trump voter. The Democrat, whom he named “Urban Guy”, was trying to convert the Donald Trump supporter (“Flyover Man”) to his low view of the president. Flyover Man was resisting. Park for a moment any reservations you might have about entering the realm of Brooks’s imagination and praise the man for at least owning his column’s fictional status. Per the conventions of the genre, he could have put the quotes in the mouth of a “cab driver” and claimed the entire exercise as a piece of reporting.

Instead, boldly, Brooks let us in on his screenplay in progress. He is hardly a stranger to negative attention: think of the outcry over a column he wrote about class and sandwiches a few years ago, in which he pitied a poorly educated friend for freaking out in the face of the word “soppressata”.

Thanks is due to the opinion writer who can summon, in a half-arsed way, the kind of limp puppet characters political strategists mistake for real people

How low the stakes were back then. Now, generating dialogue like an AI screenwriting program set to mild rightwing bias, we are treated to this kind of exchange: “If people like you are unable to acknowledge my dignity and see my problems, I’ll stay with Trump,” says Flyover Guy.

Urban Guy, bumptious and condescending, is not having this. “I hope you read the rough transcript of that Trump phone call with the Ukrainian president,” he says, with a snottiness that would make the hand of the most ardent Bernie supporter twitch for a moment over the ballot paper. Really getting into role a few beats later, our hero adds, “He lies with abandon. He slanders and insults. He pollutes the water near and far,” before breaking character and saying, very much as Brooks himself, “the cultural liberalism you preach but don’t practice is leading to the breakdown of families”. Cheers, David!

Anyway, it’s all very jolly. Contrary to the howls of protest about the idleness of Brooks fabricating views when he might have left the office to seek them out from real people, one is left feeling grateful to the man for the small joy of his absurdist break from the news.

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It is also, perhaps, a foreshadowing of the Trump era productions to come. Gary Shteyngart, in his excellent novel Lake Success, had a crack at the run-up to the Trump election; obliquely but devastatingly, the TV show Succession is nailing, weekly, the cultural context in which amoral billionaires prosper, as well as turning around an amazingly nimble subplot on #MeToo.

For anything longer range, we will have to wait. It still feels to me as if the great 9/11 novel hasn’t arrived yet and any decent state-of-the-nation Trump fiction is likely to be a long time coming. In the meantime, thanks is due to the opinion writer who can summon, in a half-arsed way, the kind of limp puppet characters political strategists mistake for real people while delivering a timely public service: another warm reminder that reporting matters.

• Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist