On With The Motley

It has become apparent that the USA has been ambushed. Michael Moore, of all people, got it exactly right. This has been a gigantic two-fingered salute to all of America’s elites, real and imaginary. One personage known to me has stated that after the last eight years he just wants to dance. Do so by all means. Bring on the motley, pop the champagne corks, fire off ordinance into the air, caper round the maypole and adorn your crowned mountebank with ribbons and laurels. Go dance in circles. And then go to bed, sleep it off, and say hello to Mr Hangover in the morning.

Like so many others, I believed that America’s women would flood to the polling booths and sweep Ms Clinton into power. And yet a majority of working-class women actually voted for him. And the unthinkable must now be thought on. Scott Adams (who also predicted the result) would have it that there is nothing to see here; move along; just watch as the Master Persuader propels his country back to the sunny uplands of genial prosperity. I wish I could share in this delusion. It is, alas, impossible.

And yes, it was at bottom all about class. Class warfare is far less tractable than any other forms of internecine strife. To the extent that Karl Marx managed to get anything at all right about the march of history, he was on the money here. The class struggle is alive and raging simply because non-porous class barriers are being entrenched at levels unseen since the 19th century. Sixteen years into the 21st century, it is as if the 20th had never happened. The prospective End Of Work, about which much has been written already, will never happen in its entirety. But more and more children every year will grow up with no prospect of ever having what their grandparents would have called a career. They will join the swelling tidal wave of the underclass. Unless the world’s super-rich begin to disgorge their bloated money-bags, there are pitchforks on the way. This century is likely to see class warfare on a scale unseen since Russia and China’s Communist revolutions. Listening to at least some of Senator Sanders' (Vermont, D) pleas for a fairer society would be a wise investment for the future.

So what happens now? We may take it as read that every single utterance this gigantic buffoon has made during his bizarre anti-campaign is nothing but postmodern vapouring. If anyone out there thinks that a solitary word this grotesque creature says may be relied upon, then I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. He embarked upon this incredible adventure solely in order to escape the consequences of his actions. It now seems that he has gotten away with it. His “fortune”, such as it is, now goes into a blind trust. Where it cannot be touched, for the duration.

What of the multiple court cases pending against him? Like many even among the legal fraternity, I do find American law an impossibly strange creature; but my understanding is that they are all to be stood down pro tem. (Please, do correct me if I am wrong.) So long as he can resist the siren song of kleptocracy during his holiday in the Oval Office, and keep his ineffable hands to himself, he is pretty much home safe for now. But for four whole years? It is not as if he has ever shown any signs of patience or willingness to play a long game. The chances that, one way or another, he will not last the distance are arguable; but I might suggest they are no better than even-money. Whether through impeachment, GOP treachery or simply ennui, it does not really matter. Bring on President Pence. And be afraid.

Would he take any interest in the job while he still has it? Yes, and no. Making what he is pleased to call his speeches is something to which we will have to accustom ourselves. Thank heaven for TV mute buttons. Nothing this abysmal, orange-haired clown says is of the slightest interest to me, nor millions of others. Please bear in mind that we have no idea at all what he thinks about anything except money and women. If it comes to taking money, he is in favour. Giving? He’s against it. He also favours The Laying-On Of Hands. Anything else? We don’t know. I am not sure I am interested enough to care.

Nuclear codes in the hands of a man with the impulse control of a demented chimpanzee? I expect the Pentagon will give him a dummy set. It isn’t as if he would ever be able to tell the difference. It is true that in international diplomacy it is frequently advantageous to be regarded as utterly deranged. This has worked surprisingly well for North Korea. Such skills as this preposterous braggart does possess will stand him in good stead there. I doubt he will start a major war. His Cabinet? Expect his usual crowd of rapacious hangers-on, abject flunkies and dunder-headed nincompoops. Oh, and Steve Bannon. I’ll come back to him. All he needs to do is set up a casting call at one of his grotesque TV pantomimes and funnel them all into their Cabinet offices. If you expect any actual government to happen: good luck. Stand by however for the pillaging of what is left of the national estate. It will be riveting TV, for those who like that sort of thing.

Now many will protest that the USA has had idiot Presidents before. I beg to differ. Dubya? An amiable keg boy whose regime was ruined by bad company. (Dick Cheney? Don Rumsfeld?? What on earth was he thinking???) Yet he was a qualified jet pilot who suffered from dyslexia, hence his amusing neologisms. Reagan? Yes, he plunged America into bankruptcy, enriched the wealthy, beggared the poor and destroyed the liberal consensus. But he brought down the Soviet Empire, bluffed out the Russians and cleverly fell asleep in Cabinet every time his staffers wanted him to bring on the Rapture. He was having none of it. The myth of the ageing puppet president is exactly that. A myth.

Brains may be overrated. Does anyone think Jimmy Carter was stupid? Yet his regime was a disaster. Ditto for Herbert Hoover, who was far worse. And, by the by, do not be fooled by Gerald Ford’s clumsiness. To play professional football (as he did) you need a first-rate intellect. He was kind, humble, and without ambition. Like so many of his generation, he served with distinction in the US military. Can anyone with functioning brain cells even imagine a world in which Donald Trump ever served his country, militarily or otherwise? Why on earth would you think he is likely to do so now?

And here is our central problem with President Trump. That he possesses rodent cunning cannot be disputed. To have tricked so many out of their rights and gotten away with it cannot be an accident. Of larger intellect he either has none; or has disguised it so cleverly that it has given up on him and sulks in a remote corner of his hyperthalmus: unavailable, uncontactable, and utterly scorned. But what then? To be remembered with even a shred of honour, you must have either brains or humanity. When you have neither, your grave will be visited with loathing and contempt.

The Trump Ascendancy can best be viewed as a Melanesian cargo cult. Go on then. Build your balsa wood aeroplane, dance around it, utter mighty spells and wait for the Cargo to turn up. But here is the rub. If you are John Frum America, your cult may remain intact because you have never returned to the archipelago where you are worshipped. When your homegrown John Frum is omnipresent; unable or unwilling to hand over the promised cargo; but distressingly Available For Comment on your nightly TV bulletins; why, what will the harvest be? Those who adore him now (for incomprehensible reasons) will infallibly turn on him as savagely as they did on his hapless opponent. This is why I rate his chances of serving his full term as fifty-fifty.

Irrespective of whether he is made to cede power to Pence, the nightmare figure of Steve Bannon, and all that he represents, will loom large over the next four years. A great deal of hand-wringing has occurred over the alt-Right Breitbart phenomenon. I see no reason to doubt any of it. Telling poor and middle-class white folks that their day has dawned; that their moment of revenge is upon us; that it’s perfectly OK to hate niggers, wops, spics, Mexicans, slant-eyes, commies, bicycle riders and the like and if they don’t like it then you can bite me – none of this bodes well for anything like a civil society for years to come. We will no longer be lamenting the rise of over-pampered college kids seeking out imaginary microaggressions under every psychedelic toadstool. The pure toxin of racial hatred will stalk America’s highways and cities. How will America respond?

With guns, bullets, outrages, murder, arson, and eventual harmony. I believe this. America has too many ethnic groups, most of whom get on well with each other, for this nonsense to reign forever. Instead of endlessly whining about privilege to their college professors, decent young white Americans will shake off their delusions, join hands with their darker-skinned brethren and sisters, and make peace with each other. If you think otherwise, I don’t think you know America as well as you think you do. Ditto for those who wish to put the boot into the queer community. I doubt the Republican Party will be too keen to join in a moral crusade to wipe out gays. There are too many gay Republicans for this to catch on in a real way, though you may expect more utter nonsense about conversion therapy. (People: it’s bollocks. Really it is. Gays are gay because they are. Get over yourselves and move on.)

There are, sad to say, larger issues here. And it is unsurprising that in The Age Of Amnesia they have been overlooked. There is the question of slavery. And before anyone leaps from their seats and tells me I am crazy: bear with me. The 21st Century Slavery Question is not one of quality. It is merely a matter of degree. Outside the USA, full metal jacket slavery flourishes. There are more slaves now than ever inhabited the unhappy earth since the eclipse of the Pax Britannica. The slavery issue for America now is the question of whether or not women own their own bodies. Those who live in more liberal climes are constantly amazed that this is still in dispute. So it was, long ago, in the mid-19th century. We speak English! We don’t do slavery! We admire the Confederates and their matchless courage. But we will not recognize your government because you uphold the supposed right of slavery. Sorry, no.

Thus spake the British Government – through intermediaries – to the CSA emissaries Mason and Slidell. And we sit in the rest of the Anglosphere in marvelling incomprehension as folks like Governor Pence (Indiana, R) enact horrors against women unfortunate enough to find themselves in a condition of unwanted pregnancy. No, women are not executed for wishing to dispense with unwanted foetuses. Not yet. But the trajectory of slavery is clear enough. If you live in Indiana as a woman, you may go about your lawful business. You may do as you please. But if you accidentally fall pregnant, even though you have a long-life implant designed to guarantee against this (and this is assuming that contraception of any form is allowed in your community) – or if you are a chaste virgin ravished against your will – then God help you. Some half-witted troglodyte will stand up in a local parliament and utter maundering drivel about “legitimate rape”. So matters stand in many states. Can a nation be half-slave, and half-free?

Abraham Lincoln thought not. Can the USA survive its current schism on the right of women to own their own bodies? I wonder. Ah, but we are a Christian nation! (Really? Have you read your own Founding Fathers? I thought not.) In any case, the Christian view of abortion is clear enough. Yes, it’s a sin. A sin, I would venture, entered into lightly never. A sin embarked upon as a last resort, in preference to lives marred and ruined. A sin more urgently desired when the same lawmakers who strive so officiously for the rights of the foetus will not lift their littlest finger to provide for once it is born. And sins are prosecuted by the state in all cases? Just this one. Because it makes the promulgators feel insufferably self-righteous. Because these whited sepulchres, these Pharisaical hypocrites, wish to expunge their inner sense of unworthiness for office by prodnosing into matters which are no concern of theirs.

Thus the USA has muddled along for forty-odd years: half-slave and half-free. Yet what now? Would the repeal of Roe vs Wade be the equivalent of the Dred Scott case, which crystallized the nineteenth-century dispute and lit the fuse which led to war? I think not, if only because there is a conservative, libertarian argument against it: that no branch of the federal government has any business making pronouncements on such matters. There is substance to this argument.

Yet nature abhors a vacuum. Could the Republican Party, having achieved its long-cherished heart’s desire, stop there? The odds are against it. If they get their way on this, some new edict will probably arise which galvanises the women of America into passionate fury. Do not imagine for a moment that Republican women do not have abortions. Of course they do. And this would continue even if abortions were outlawed. There will always be private clinics for the daughters of the patrician class. This is all about punishing the poor for being poor. These lawmakers will not rest until there are hordes of starving beggars on every street corner.

Be warned, America. The shadow of Dred Scott lies over you yet. And how richly ironic it would be that the Republican Party, which arose from the shame of slavery, should destroy itself by being on the wrong side of a similar debate. In the meantime, the front-page picture of the president-elect from my daily newspaper currently lies at the bottom of my cats’ litter tray. He deserves no better. Civility is a great virtue, and ought to be practised widely. It is utterly thrown away on Donald Trump. He shows none, and he deserves none. When he bows his proud head, and asks forgiveness for his many crimes, then yes. Absolutely. Christian charity demands no less. Until then, let his image be given its proper due.