Trumpian Tragedy

The tragedy of Abraham Lincoln was that he went to the theatre. It is tempting to be sorry that Donald Trump didn't himself patronise the theatre. He has, nevertheless, spent four years creating his very own style of theatrical performance, and we are currently watching the tragic finale.

This failed businessman (who managed to persuade nearly half of the USA that he was successful) has provided a deluge of inappropriate behaviour, a fountain of religious hypocrisy, and a cluster bomb of personal insults. He ran roughshod over hitherto accepted norms of behaviour: 

• Demeaning women
• Applying insulting epithets to colleagues and political opponents alike.
• Calling fallen veterans suckers and losers; 
• Making fun of disability.
• Telling a presidential competitor that he had an ugly wife.
• Demeaning a high-profile war hero because he'd been captured.
• Sucking up to tyrannical dictators whilst insulting his international allies.
• Disrespecting the British Head of State by walking directly in front of her. 
• Standing next to the British Prime Minister at a press briefing and publicly belittling her. 
• Making it OK for Americans to hate each other. 
• Instilling into the national psyche that the free press is the "Enemy of the People". 
• Organising grandiose Mussolini-style photo ops.
• Surrounding himself with crooks and sycophants (any one of which could be "A great guy" one day and a fired "Loser" the next.) 
• Telling well over 20,000 documented lies, the very first one being about the number of people attending his inauguration.

All of this was deemed as acceptable (and even enjoyable) behaviour by what became known as his "Core Base" .. that section of Republican voters who were happy to accept as 'Facts' anything their Dear Leader told them were facts. Some even thought Trump had been sent by God! Their slogan was "Make America Great Again", the irony being that in their approval of their saviour's behaviour they were in fact making America an international laughing stock (which is not my definition of "Great"). The other slogan .. "America First" coined by Trump was made worthless by the fact that much of his Trump-branded goods was made in China!

The final act of this tragedy has been beyond the imagination of most of us: the storming of the seat of democratic government by a howling assortment of thugs, criminals, idiots, neo-NAZIS, white supremacists, anarchists, and vicious hooligans calling for the Vice President to be hanged (presumably because he had officially confirmed that Joe Biden had decisively won the Presidential election). 

Donald Trump and his MAGA brigade stuck to the belief that Trump had in fact won the election by a "landslide", and an evil cabal of Democrats (all of whom are apparently Satan-worshippers and Communists) had "stolen" the election by nefarious means, in spite of a series of  court judgements that said otherwise. "President" Trump encouraged his supporters in this direction, and promised to be there with them. Of course, he wasn't. He should have said "I'm behind you", because he was .. a long way behind, watching it all on TV. (More 'leadership').

Consequent upon the howling mob rampaging through The Capitol building, Joe Biden's inauguration will be a poor affair, with little or no public attendance, taking place encircled by a fence topped with razor wire and 15,000 armed National Guard. No doubt Trump will take solace from such a travesty of what normally occurs befalling his erstwhile opponent.

It's good to know that arrests and prosecutions have ensued from all of this, but I worry that Biden's going to have a hell of a job on re-uniting this divided nation and restoring their international reputation. We must hope that this particular tragi-farce is never shown again on the world stage, or indeed the 'provincial theatres' of State governments.

Footnote for Cult Members: It would appear that God has had second thoughts.

The Results are the Results. Get over it.

By the simple standards of normal democracy, Hillary Clinton won the 2016 Presidential Election (but only just!). But she lost it.

But America (like Britain) doesn't operate by those simple standards. Clinton won the national popular vote, and one would think that this would decide who becomes the national President. But it didn't, because the result of the popular vote in each individual State was translated into a certain number of Electoral College Votes by a formula designed to make some States' votes more powerful than others, according to the population number in each State. And it is the Electoral College votes that decide the winner. (At least, that is how I .. as a foreigner .. understand the system. No doubt some friendly American will correct me if I'm wrong).

Similarly (though not exactly the same) in Britain, electing one MP from a long list of candidates by the "First past the post" system almost guarantees that the winner does not command an overall majority.

So, the results are in, and the result is President-elect Trump. There is absolutely no point in all these anti-Trump demonstrations currently going on in America, with people holding placards saying "Trump is not my President". I'm sorry, but yes he is! The result is the result and you have to live with it. Get over it. That's democracy according to the American system. You should have had demonstrations long before this, campaigning for a different voting system.

Similarly in Britain, it is no use complaining about the results of a General Election that gives you a so-called majority government because one Party returned more MPs than another Party, and most of those MPs didn't actually represent a clear majority in each constituency. For most of my life I have belonged to a Party that espouses the cause of Proportional Representation. Meanwhile, I am obliged to accept the results of an electoral system with which I disagree.

The Trump phenomenon has been compared to the recent "Brexit" phenomenon where there appears to have been a general popular uprising against the status quo, concern over jobs, prejudice and fear over immigration figures, and a dislike of the "ruling elite". I voted to remain in the European Union, as did nearly half the population, but slightly more than half voted the other way. This saddened me, but I have no option but to accept the result with good grace and hope that we can all get on with making the new reality work. Of course, there was no issue here on the democratic process, because it was a national vote on a simple binary choice, IN or OUT. The issue itself was far more complex, but the electoral system itself was straightforward.

In conclusion, then, I am saying that Americans (and the British, and the rest of the world) have to accept the reality of a Trump Presidency, and make the best of it. The system that brought it about, i.e., a strange voting system, cash-rich candidates, and unlimited expenditure on negative TV  advertising, is another fight for another day.

The US Presidential Race

The U.S. Republican Party's attempts to find a candidate to challenge Barak Obama in November is nothing if not entertaining.

It's a shame that American politics is dictated so much by how much wealth you have and/or how much extra cash you can raise, apparently without limit, but that democratic deficit is somewhat offset by the sheer entertainment value of the shenanigans these guys get up to in order to get elected.

They indulge in negative campaigning on radio and television to an extent that British politicians can only dream of. Newt Gingrich (what kind of a name is that?! Nearly as weird as Barak Obama) put out an advert the other week designed to punch out his main rival, Mitt Romney. Added to Romney's many sins, including the fact that he "loves firing people" was the fact that "he speaks French"! I'm struggling to find that a reason for disqualifying the man.

Of course all American politicians have to be openly followers of God. The trouble is, which God? The Evangelicals' God, the Catholics' God, the Baptist's God, the Presbyterians' God, the Mormons' God? Perhaps not the Mormons' God (could be Mitt Romney's undoing), and certainly not the Muslims' God. If you don't like (the avowed Christian) Barak Obama one of the popular insults is to call him a Muslim. This is all very perplexing to us in the UK because our politicians "don't do God", nor would we expect them to.

The election of an openly atheist American to the presidency is about as likely as Greece paying off its debts

.

The front runners for the Republican nomination now appear to be Mitt Romney the Mormon, or Newt Gingrich the "open marriage" advocate. There must be a touch of the Mormon in Gingrich, having had several wives, though to be fair in his case, not all at the same time. But Romney is a rare Republican in having once supported the idea of a health care programme; this might have something to do with God telling Joseph Smith to keep on taking the tablets.

If I were a betting man I'd put money on Barak Obama still being President after November.

The Man for Me

I thought I would watch five minutes of this but thirty minutes later I was still watching and listening. He's the man for me. It's a shame I don't have a vote! Clinton can't hold a candle to this man, and as for the present incumbent of the White House he appears by comparison to be even more of an intellectual dwarf than we had at first thought.