Dynasty and Farce in D.C.: From Back Before That Election
(This was written in early 2016 before the US elected Trump. That president who will usher in the penultimate painting of Thomas Cole’s superb series.)
This year the American citizen will be given the choice of voting for their country to become the laughing stock of the world or abstaining, leaving that privilege to others. And in either case, dropping the rest of us in it.
Currently, the only worthwhile and intelligent candidate faces a giant impediment: you can say the preceding about him. The excitement which initially propelled old man Bernie is coming to a creaking stand-still. It is Sanders’ very peers — the over 60s — which have proved the least convinced, and it is this decrepit bunch which will fill the largest proportion of voting booths on November 8th. (Senility, after-all, is the best recruiter the Right has got.)
So what has the great American democratic system thrown up instead? A small man for whom tongue twisters must be debilitating, and a woman who can claim to being one of the world’s most infamous crooks before moving into the Oval Office.
I know, I know. In that fashion typical of Brits, I’ve looked beyond my up-turned nose and guffawed at our estranged, hopelessly idealistic cousins in the West. Not only is this type of commentary ungallant, it’s usually wholly self-deceiving given the stupidity which passes as thought in the United Kingdom — “well I wouldn’t want the queen’s job”. Usually.
This election race matters because voters will not merely be choosing the American president, they’ll be choosing the world’s president. Leaving the relatively safe, although blood-soaked hands of Obama, we speed toward rising seas, the spectre of nuclear catastrophe and war, war, war. The driving seat will be occupied by either (did you ever think we would be seeing this?) Trump or Clinton II. Given his much publicized deep, personal connection with the number one, I’ll start with him.
Trump
This is a man who both speaks at a 4th Grade level and balances a doormat on his head, and yet, is managing to command the love and respect of HUGE numbers of people. Trump goes up to the podium day after day, tilts his head stroke-ways, adopts a convincing likeness of Mr Toad, and speaks to those gathered as if they were 8 year-olds. And, keeping the journalists badgered into attending these rallies to one side, the audience seems to love it. He’s repetitive, abrasive and about 5000 miles away from anything that could conceivably be considered eloquent; yet, somehow, it works. Here is how you make Georgian farmers’ wives and those ultra-hetero Joes damp down there:
“We are out of control… We have no idea whose coming into this country. We have no idea if they love us or hate us. We have no idea if they want to bomb us.”
On foreign policy:
“I dealt with Gaddafi. I rented him a piece of land. He paid me more for one night than the land was worth for two years, and then I didn’t let him use the land. That’s what we should be doing. I don’t want to use the word ‘screwed,’ but I screwed him. That’s what we should be doing.”
Sometimes the shortest are the best.
“I will be… the greatest jobs president that God ever created, let me tell you.”
This is what success sounds like in America? A silver spoon which bears the scratches of multiple bankruptcies and smeared, as it is, by incestuous innuendo. C’mon now, you’re just making it easy for us.
Many have drawn the red string of incrimination between the portraits of Donald and Adolf in recent weeks (helped by Trump’s ex revealing the collection of Third Reich biographies at his bedside). Not quite as lazy a comparison as we’re used to, but still lazy. I took some time to visit neo-Nazi sites and read the speeches of the Fuhrer, and I can report: whatever else you may say of him, he was capable of talking in sentences.
If you have been fortunate enough (and sufficiently un-Muslim) to actually see one of these spectacles in person you’d know that the hollow, wheezy cheers result not from lack of numbers. It has more to do with the, ahem, advanced age of those in the stands. Trump’s ranks are grey. This demographic knows its History — hell, they’ve lived it, and this experience has clearly taught them one thing if nothing else: they rather be spoken to as if none of that happened. As if they were children. (Those who fear a resumption of the Civil War can at least be glad that the side Reaction takes will also be taken by cataracts and arthritic knees.)
It’ll be no surprise to state this at this juncture, Trump isn’t quite hitting my G-spot: I. Just. Don’t. Get. It. Perhaps Steinbeck’s words can offer some explanation, “I guess the trouble is that we [the United States] don’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone is a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.” Someday, they think, that’ll be my name shitting on the skyline.
A part of me, now a faint glimmer, still believes that Trump is doing all this for a laugh. That he’ll step in front of a television camera at the twilight of election season and say, “seriously, you lot fell for that?!” and laugh himself into a coma. But then, even then, Ted Cruz will just come along and sweep up the flock and, before you could say “/pol/ isn’t going to like this”, we’ll have the prospect of fascism all over again.
Clinton
From fascism, taking the form of Trump, to corruption, fraud, corporatism and the murder of un-people and former associates in the wake of Clinton (allegedly).
Clinton. Clint-on. What other than sickly stomachs has that name produced? And that’s aside from one or two illegitimate children, and piles of dead Africans. Just when you thought matters couldn’t possibly get worse, Hillary, the spawn of ill-gotten gains and tutored in the dark arts by Tricky Dickie himself, takes centre stage. Because it was in Nixon’s Republican Party, and later being among the first to examine his secret tapes, that she finely honed her veneers.
Even the staunch Clintonite Chris ‘Big-Gob’ Matthews is suggesting that Hillary shares more in common with Dick than their mutual acceptance of sexual assault,
“Most politicians want you to know everything about them. They do like the fact that [there is] public exposure. She is the absolute opposite, like Nixon was. The exact opposite of that.”
And the comparisons needn’t end there. Both Clinton and Nixon participated in character assassination, the first being central to the intimidation and slander campaign of Bill’s many victims. Both Clinton and Nixon exploited mass human disaster for their own narcissistic reasons — the former in Kosovo, the other in Indochina. Both Clinton and Nixon have lent their ear to that serpent Kissinger (he’ll outlive us all at this rate, but then again, do demons ever expire?). Clixon is war-mongering, conniving and, perhaps most irritating of all, incompetent. (Try to remember that it was she who fucked up health care reform in the 90’s when she’s warning voters that Sanders’ll do just that.)
Many, including Trump, have been attacked in turn for attacking Hillary “personally”. In other words: by drawing attention to her marriage to a serial rapist. “Underhanded”, they say; “irrelevant” they add for good measure. Are we really to believe that this bit of trivia says nothing about Clinton’s morals?
But she’s a woman, cries CNN. Surely that makes her a friend to all women and a symbol of the feminist ideal to challenge Maggie herself? Feminism is not sinisterly threatening the rape victims of My Man. Nor is aiding and legitimating the overthrow of a government that was challenging a deep-seated patriarchy. (I highly recommend Greg Grandin’s reporting here.) Neesa Medina, director of the country’s Women’s Rights Center, describes the state of post-coup Honduras.
The 2009 coup had repercussions for sexual and reproductive rights for Honduran women…. As a member of a feminist organization severely affected by the support of the U.S. for militaristic policies of recent governments, I must say that it is important that voters take the time to do a critical structural analysis of all of the information in the campaign proposals and previous actions of those running for president. United States support for militarily invasive policies in other countries has a negative impact on the women in these countries.
The current dictatorship under [President Juan Orlando] Hernandez is part of [Hillary Clinton’s] creation. The misery doesn’t just affect women with more brutality, but also our bodies are exposed to the militarist ideology with which they uphold poverty and kill us; to the conservative fundamentalism with which they deny the exercise of our sexual autonomy; and to the possibility of being creative people and not just workers for their factories and way of life.
This has more to do with allowing the same old bastards to do the same old thing. And sending the signal to nearby hotshots that you, yourself, will do anything if there’s enough zeroes attached.
For more see vox.com
To remind the electorate of Hillary’s all-consuming hunger for power is not political opportunism, it’s a warning in the shape of a diagnosis. As told by Alexander Cockburn:
[Clinton’s driver with her and her friends in the back] passed a beggar, and as they did so the First Lady expressed her disgust for the mendicant, adding, “He wouldn’t be a bum if he had a piece of ass.” The driver was able to shed no light on how or why she had arrived at this conclusion, stunned as he was by the coarse nature of her observations. Then they passed two young black women with babies. “There go two welfare cases. They make me sick. They’re too lazy to work,” said Senator Clinton, champion of mothers and children everywhere.
Even still: with what has managed to seep out about this most managed of existences, she still acts, and is treated, as if she’s owed the presidency.
Do we need any more evidence that, just as clinical depression is unhealthy and, indeed, a disorder, those who face the future with optimism are just as skewed in mind? Irrational and self-defeating in their own strange — and certainly less sympathic — ways? Psychiatrists should perhaps, even, be more concerned by those grinning, rather than grimacing, during this freak show. I would certainly like an answer (perhaps posed in a slightly more tactful way), from those enjoying the display, to “what the hell is wrong with you?”
