President Trump.
Sitting in Tel Avi airport, scanning the news feeds, the ugly truth dawns that Trump will win the presidency of the most powerful nation on earth. I say ugly, because just like with Brexit, whatever the merits of the guy, it's a siren call to the nastiness in all of us. Racism, bigotry, suspicion edged with malice of 'the other' all gets a green card.
I was sat next to a black American elderly lady from California. She was downcast by the unexpected turn of events, and reflected that since Obama's election a lot of racism had bubbled beneath the surface. Trump 'dog whistled' to the likes of the KKK could endorse him with impunity, despite a long delayed reposte from Trump. America has long had a racist, vicious underbelly and it just barked back into life.
Yet it was also an election the Democrats and the political establishment lost. Through sheer arrogance and hubris. Quite frankly, who could really think of the wife of one of the only presidents to be impeached waltzing back into the White House with the said impeached president on her arm as America's First Gentleman? Is their no shame, no repentance, no humility, no sense of decency which the lust for power won't cast aside? It's not so much the emails, though that too speaks of entitlement and arrogance, but the whole 'Clinton' thing. I don't think she is a excessively corrupt and malicious person, at least as compare to the other political operators of the US Establishment, but her inability to see how inappropriate her push for ultimate power is, that's breathtaking in its hubris. Her sense of entitlement certainly gripped my throat. A vote for Clinton, even against someone as inappropriate and ill equipped as Trump, would always be through clenched teeth and clasped nose.
In part the political and media establishment brought this on themselves, again with this sense of entitlement and arrogance. Trump should have been wiped from the floor in the early stages of the a Republican primaries, and a credible candidate come to the fore, but that didn't happen as the media played entertainment and the establishment took the threat seriously much too late.
At a deeper level, the political establishment had failed to take the electorate, not least the more traditional components of society, seriously. The 'almost' victory for Saunders against Clinton, despite the massive media contempt for him and the unashamed attempt by the Democratic establishment to crush him and his voice, should have alerted everyone that Americans in general are fed up to the back teeth with the way in which real power is all sown up with vested interests, with an elite few who network, collude and parcel out the goodies in partisan selfishness. Yet those vested interests were so absolutely committed to their sense of entitlement, so determined to use their power to crush the concerns of people they simply use as the means of achieving their own power, that they pressed ahead regardless of the consequences for the good of their country or indeed of the international community. And In doing so the Democrats handed a crass, sexist, racist-pandering oaf, with absolutely no political experience and with a long track record of bankruptcy, self-confessed tax evasion and exploitative business practices, a real chance to get his hands of the nuclear arsenal of the world's greatest nuclear power.
That a mean spirited populist could tap into that seam of helpless disenfranchisement was only a matter of time, especially when a media darling came onto the stage. Pandering to the need for anything but the bland political non-speech of the mainline candidates, whose carefully crafted lines promised everything and meant zilch, Trump was paraded as the political clown but which in doing so created the edge to ensure that bad news is always good news, keeping Trump always on the front page and disturbing enough to ensure he captured the headlines day in, day out. The blandness of the political establishment couldn't compete and the Republicans handed Clinton an opponent she could, as the ultimate insider who embodied the very ethos of 'the Hill' which the vast majority of ordinary and not so ordinary Americans detest, had a very real chance of beating.
As the Podesta emails showed, the political class has nothing but contempt for much of the traditional sections of American society, not least the Catholic Church, which they have sought to not only manipulate but corrupt. Yet Trump himself is also brazen in this, playing the pro life card and getting the evangelicals praying over him, when he has openly said he has no need of forgiveness for anything and who divisive and violent rhetoric place him way outside the Christian mainstream. The Christian community, with its long tradition of respect for all human life and a culture rooted in the dignity of the disabled, of people of all shades of skin colour, and of transcending national boundaries, should have led the charge against this narcissistic charlatan, but their penchant for taking single issues such as abortion and a resentment at the contempt which the likes of Clinton and the liberalising elite hold them, fell into a naive political ostrich park, blinded to the reality of what a Trump government will likely mean and which their Creed should have demanded they ensured never remotely reached a positing of national leadership. A country led by a man who mocks people with disabilities in public on the national the stage with impunity and the applause of the adoring mob, is not one where surviving abortion is likely to mean very much. A society where any and every minority group is easy scape goat material, where walls are seen as political solutions, is a society where the ghetto and euthanasia are not far behind, the exclusion, and then the cull of the unworthy, the parasites, the different and deviant. This is the political backdrop against which Americans have now chosen to live.
A Trump presidency needn't be a disaster, just as Brexit needn't be the end of life as we know it, but the undercurrents that each of these results has been partly built on mean that both results bring out the worst in each of us, and in our various communities, bringing them closer to the surface. It gives a surge of confidence to those whose tongues remain tied while public opprobrium is swift, strong and clear against any racist and phobic behaviour, but whose minds nevertheless seethe with resentments not least because of the climate which makes expression of those fears unacceptable. These two political results have, as a result, made the English speaking world a much harsher, nasty, phobic and aggressively isolationist one. Winter has come with a harsh north wind.
I was sat next to a black American elderly lady from California. She was downcast by the unexpected turn of events, and reflected that since Obama's election a lot of racism had bubbled beneath the surface. Trump 'dog whistled' to the likes of the KKK could endorse him with impunity, despite a long delayed reposte from Trump. America has long had a racist, vicious underbelly and it just barked back into life.
Yet it was also an election the Democrats and the political establishment lost. Through sheer arrogance and hubris. Quite frankly, who could really think of the wife of one of the only presidents to be impeached waltzing back into the White House with the said impeached president on her arm as America's First Gentleman? Is their no shame, no repentance, no humility, no sense of decency which the lust for power won't cast aside? It's not so much the emails, though that too speaks of entitlement and arrogance, but the whole 'Clinton' thing. I don't think she is a excessively corrupt and malicious person, at least as compare to the other political operators of the US Establishment, but her inability to see how inappropriate her push for ultimate power is, that's breathtaking in its hubris. Her sense of entitlement certainly gripped my throat. A vote for Clinton, even against someone as inappropriate and ill equipped as Trump, would always be through clenched teeth and clasped nose.
In part the political and media establishment brought this on themselves, again with this sense of entitlement and arrogance. Trump should have been wiped from the floor in the early stages of the a Republican primaries, and a credible candidate come to the fore, but that didn't happen as the media played entertainment and the establishment took the threat seriously much too late.
At a deeper level, the political establishment had failed to take the electorate, not least the more traditional components of society, seriously. The 'almost' victory for Saunders against Clinton, despite the massive media contempt for him and the unashamed attempt by the Democratic establishment to crush him and his voice, should have alerted everyone that Americans in general are fed up to the back teeth with the way in which real power is all sown up with vested interests, with an elite few who network, collude and parcel out the goodies in partisan selfishness. Yet those vested interests were so absolutely committed to their sense of entitlement, so determined to use their power to crush the concerns of people they simply use as the means of achieving their own power, that they pressed ahead regardless of the consequences for the good of their country or indeed of the international community. And In doing so the Democrats handed a crass, sexist, racist-pandering oaf, with absolutely no political experience and with a long track record of bankruptcy, self-confessed tax evasion and exploitative business practices, a real chance to get his hands of the nuclear arsenal of the world's greatest nuclear power.
That a mean spirited populist could tap into that seam of helpless disenfranchisement was only a matter of time, especially when a media darling came onto the stage. Pandering to the need for anything but the bland political non-speech of the mainline candidates, whose carefully crafted lines promised everything and meant zilch, Trump was paraded as the political clown but which in doing so created the edge to ensure that bad news is always good news, keeping Trump always on the front page and disturbing enough to ensure he captured the headlines day in, day out. The blandness of the political establishment couldn't compete and the Republicans handed Clinton an opponent she could, as the ultimate insider who embodied the very ethos of 'the Hill' which the vast majority of ordinary and not so ordinary Americans detest, had a very real chance of beating.
As the Podesta emails showed, the political class has nothing but contempt for much of the traditional sections of American society, not least the Catholic Church, which they have sought to not only manipulate but corrupt. Yet Trump himself is also brazen in this, playing the pro life card and getting the evangelicals praying over him, when he has openly said he has no need of forgiveness for anything and who divisive and violent rhetoric place him way outside the Christian mainstream. The Christian community, with its long tradition of respect for all human life and a culture rooted in the dignity of the disabled, of people of all shades of skin colour, and of transcending national boundaries, should have led the charge against this narcissistic charlatan, but their penchant for taking single issues such as abortion and a resentment at the contempt which the likes of Clinton and the liberalising elite hold them, fell into a naive political ostrich park, blinded to the reality of what a Trump government will likely mean and which their Creed should have demanded they ensured never remotely reached a positing of national leadership. A country led by a man who mocks people with disabilities in public on the national the stage with impunity and the applause of the adoring mob, is not one where surviving abortion is likely to mean very much. A society where any and every minority group is easy scape goat material, where walls are seen as political solutions, is a society where the ghetto and euthanasia are not far behind, the exclusion, and then the cull of the unworthy, the parasites, the different and deviant. This is the political backdrop against which Americans have now chosen to live.
A Trump presidency needn't be a disaster, just as Brexit needn't be the end of life as we know it, but the undercurrents that each of these results has been partly built on mean that both results bring out the worst in each of us, and in our various communities, bringing them closer to the surface. It gives a surge of confidence to those whose tongues remain tied while public opprobrium is swift, strong and clear against any racist and phobic behaviour, but whose minds nevertheless seethe with resentments not least because of the climate which makes expression of those fears unacceptable. These two political results have, as a result, made the English speaking world a much harsher, nasty, phobic and aggressively isolationist one. Winter has come with a harsh north wind.
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