It seems almost perverse to write a blog on Christmas Day, okay there is not much television, there are no newspapers today and its many hours before I confront my Christmas partridge( not mercifully on a pear tree) . However this Christmas I am more than a little disturbed, a few days ago we had a conversation with an old friend in California, Skype is a wonderful tool. Susan, our friend, who is usually the spirit of optimism, the sort of American who could well have been up along there with the founding fathers( except of course she would be a founding mother) who left the old autocracies and tyrannies of Europe to create a new world in a new continent in the spirit of the Enlightenment.
Friends of mine are often quite surprised when they hear me a hardened cynical old leftist speak warmly of the creation of America. Of course it has a history much of which is hideously reactionary that includes the destruction of the Native American people, the ruination of much of the natural resources of the country and of course the horror that was slavery.
Yet yet it's hard not to admire the courage of those men and women who founded the country, who resisted the imposition of the British Empire and who wrote the constitution that has never been bettered in the history of mankind, although sadly today much of it is ignored and treated with contempt and outright hatred. I know Thomas Jefferson kept slaves( although his death gave them their freedom) and John Adams may have been a bit of an old detail merchant( yet in the constitution he wrote for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts it enshrined equal education for girls) and even George Washington was a bit autocratic at times.
Yet America produced heroes who challenged the old world and sought change for the benefit of all mankind, dear old Tom Paine, an East Anglian by birth would have been a remarkable man at any time in history.
So when Susan talked last week about the fears she has for her country drifting into some sort of tyranny, ruled by a despot it seemed to me that her world view was far too pessimistic even for someone living in the belly of the beast.
Then in Sunday's Observer there was an article by Heather Cox Richardson a professor of history at Boston College and sent shivers down my spine and I've been thinking about Susan's words and also Prof Richardson's piece the last few days. If you have missed the article consider please the opening sentence:
'Since January there have been frightening signs that America is becoming an oligarchy overseen by dictator. From the first, Donald Trump has followed an authoritarian playbook,, beginning with his rejection of objective reality.'s early on to defend the assertion that the crowd at Trump's inauguration was the biggest ever witnessed, presidential spokesperson Kellyanne Conway explained that the administration used"alternative facts". Since then, the president has repeatedly attacked fact-based media as"fake news". Indeed, with his insistence on alternative reality, from sometimes seems like an elderly Fox news- addled neighbour suddenly given power to make his bizarrely warped view of America real'.
Prof Richardson goes on to say chillingly:
'But now, it feels all too real, with from delivering on the economic core of his vision. He has slashed regulations that protect workers, walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership,attacked theAffordable Care Act("Obamacare") and gutted the government. Finally in a dramatic"win" for his administration, the Republicans last week passed a major tax overhaul that slashes taxes primarily for the wealthy and is projected to create an almost $1.5 trillion deficit. Republicans have already said that the only way to address that4 will be with cuts to Medicare and Social Security you.
Prof Robinson pointed out that for decades he has been the policy of the Republicans that government needed to be small and that regulations and taxes weakened the power of big business to prosper because of course they argued that strong business would eventually ensure a wealthy economy that would trickle down to the poorest in society(sound familiar ?) That's why they were bitterly opposed FDR'sNew Deal that got America out of the 1930s depression. She went on to draw attention to the policies of Ronald Reagan, whose Conservative policies which argued that government was not the solution to the contrary is problems government he argued was the problem. Of course what that meant was that the poorest in American society got poorer and the rich richer, and more than that it was a white racist policy, because of course so many Afro-Americans were indeed the poorest and most dispossessed section of the community.
Reagan personified the rugged Individualist, The myth of the American cowboy hero riding outTo save the virtue of the beautiful white girl.
Trump represents the spirit of Reagan with balls on(an unfortunate image), he has used in a few short months racism and misogyny and as Prof Robinson puts it:
"Brags about how he knows better than anyone how to run a successful business, how to find Isis, how to find the"best people"for office...... Turning the government over to small cadre of wealthy businessmen, unhampered, to run the country so see fit. When Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore will his cowboy hat and rode his horse to the polls in Alabama, he was deliberately embodying Republican individualist principles.'
If you add to the tribalism and racism inherent in the American Republican right then it's only a small short step after trashing the press, the State Department, the security services and the FBI and relying only on a small group of unreconstructed Alt-right Crazies(And remember that Nigel Farage is one of them) then the stage is set at some time in the near future for America to fall apart in chaos and then the strong leader will emerge taking all power in his own hands(and those of his chums) and declaring that America has redefined democracy in terms of what you would call it- how about neo-fascism?.
Best try and see the musical'Hamilton' before Trump removes the passports from the actors and declares them non-Americans.
Monday 25 December 2017
Monday 4 December 2017
A not very clever man has taken over the White House, could things get any worse?
Listening to Trumpy is not something I recommend to anyone of a nervous disposition. Everyday and in every way he seems to be getting more and more disconnected, not merely with his so-called job as president of the United States, but even as a mediocre passing the time of day human being.
It would seem to me that he has lost all touch with whatever reality passed between his ears. In fact the world of the Donald reminds me acutely of what used to be my favourite film, shorthand title was always Marat/Sade and it was based on the play by Peter Weiss and directed by Peter Hall. In case you don't know or have forgotten the story was about a play but on in the asylum by the inmates and directed by the Marquis de Sade. An engaging sexual pervert who gave his name to the practice of sadism. The film was in many ways cruel, complex, and yet very entertaining and the politics were probably on the right side of goodness if not morality.
What is happening in the White House today reminds me of the activities in the asylum and the disconcerting reality is that Trump has none of the finer qualities of de Sade. The play was of course a satire both on postrevolutionary France, and to some extent modern Europe. What however is happening today is very far from satire indeed it is beyond satire. There is no comedy writer who could invent Donald Trump, I can think of no scriptwriter working in the cinema are on television who could recreate a creature like POTUS , Indeed if the most powerful man in the world needed to wear a baseball cap to remind himself that he was the president of the United States then I fear we will need for the zeitgeist.
A lot of words have been bandied about to describe just who what the president is, I have no doubt what he is he is to put it bluntly an unreconstructed fascist. People are pretending that when he tweeted the videos first put on Facebook by the woman who is the deputy leader of Britain First He could not have been unaware of who she was and what her organisation represented, it is an avowed extremist organisation that exists to spread racism, and to create division amongst people. It is a fact that it has gained the support and approval of no less an organisation in America than the Ku Klux Klan – that must say all you need to know about this organisation. By implication it would seem impossible that the most powerful man in the world would not know the source of his fake news and its purpose.
But then he already has a track record of supporting racist extremism in America, just think Charlottesville. Of course we should all realise where his political trajectory comes from, to use the phrase America First is not an echo of the American fascist movement before the start of World War II. Woody Guthrie, whose guitar always had the slogan'this machine Kills Fascists'wrote a brilliant song about the American First movement who did not want America to enter the war against Nazism and as Woody said"They say America first but they mean America next."
In an ever more complex and interconnected world isolationism is a lousy solution it breeds vision and ultimately war, there is no middle ground. It has echoes all over Europe and many other parts of the world today, it is the underlying meme that is Brexit – the political equivalent of being a Millwall football hooligan who thinks everyone hates him. Let's build big walls, customs posts, padlocked the doors and block up the windows let nobody in and with a bit of luck the rest of the world won't know we're here and then we don't have to speak to them. Whilst the notion of ourselves alone might have worked 50 or a hundred years ago it is no longer valid in this century. Those who want to cut off the rest of the world can only do so by creating a ghetto, Trump wants a ghetto where he can rule supreme for as long as his hair doesn't fall out. Farage longs for a little Englander nation that doesn't have to talk to foreign people (but of course he still happy to take a pension of £73,000 from those foreigners across the channel!)
The world has never been more interconnected and it seems more than ever that the human species must hang together almost certainly it will hang separately.
It would seem to me that he has lost all touch with whatever reality passed between his ears. In fact the world of the Donald reminds me acutely of what used to be my favourite film, shorthand title was always Marat/Sade and it was based on the play by Peter Weiss and directed by Peter Hall. In case you don't know or have forgotten the story was about a play but on in the asylum by the inmates and directed by the Marquis de Sade. An engaging sexual pervert who gave his name to the practice of sadism. The film was in many ways cruel, complex, and yet very entertaining and the politics were probably on the right side of goodness if not morality.
What is happening in the White House today reminds me of the activities in the asylum and the disconcerting reality is that Trump has none of the finer qualities of de Sade. The play was of course a satire both on postrevolutionary France, and to some extent modern Europe. What however is happening today is very far from satire indeed it is beyond satire. There is no comedy writer who could invent Donald Trump, I can think of no scriptwriter working in the cinema are on television who could recreate a creature like POTUS , Indeed if the most powerful man in the world needed to wear a baseball cap to remind himself that he was the president of the United States then I fear we will need for the zeitgeist.
A lot of words have been bandied about to describe just who what the president is, I have no doubt what he is he is to put it bluntly an unreconstructed fascist. People are pretending that when he tweeted the videos first put on Facebook by the woman who is the deputy leader of Britain First He could not have been unaware of who she was and what her organisation represented, it is an avowed extremist organisation that exists to spread racism, and to create division amongst people. It is a fact that it has gained the support and approval of no less an organisation in America than the Ku Klux Klan – that must say all you need to know about this organisation. By implication it would seem impossible that the most powerful man in the world would not know the source of his fake news and its purpose.
But then he already has a track record of supporting racist extremism in America, just think Charlottesville. Of course we should all realise where his political trajectory comes from, to use the phrase America First is not an echo of the American fascist movement before the start of World War II. Woody Guthrie, whose guitar always had the slogan'this machine Kills Fascists'wrote a brilliant song about the American First movement who did not want America to enter the war against Nazism and as Woody said"They say America first but they mean America next."
In an ever more complex and interconnected world isolationism is a lousy solution it breeds vision and ultimately war, there is no middle ground. It has echoes all over Europe and many other parts of the world today, it is the underlying meme that is Brexit – the political equivalent of being a Millwall football hooligan who thinks everyone hates him. Let's build big walls, customs posts, padlocked the doors and block up the windows let nobody in and with a bit of luck the rest of the world won't know we're here and then we don't have to speak to them. Whilst the notion of ourselves alone might have worked 50 or a hundred years ago it is no longer valid in this century. Those who want to cut off the rest of the world can only do so by creating a ghetto, Trump wants a ghetto where he can rule supreme for as long as his hair doesn't fall out. Farage longs for a little Englander nation that doesn't have to talk to foreign people (but of course he still happy to take a pension of £73,000 from those foreigners across the channel!)
The world has never been more interconnected and it seems more than ever that the human species must hang together almost certainly it will hang separately.
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