Enough!

 New Lockdown, into the third week, Saturday

 

Anywhere else in the world what Trump is doing at the moment would be called out for what it is, a coup attempt.   

     What international reputation has survived the last four years of arrogant contempt for the rest of humanity as expressed by the holder of the office of President of the United States of America, is finally being shredded as the callous egoist drives slowly past unmasked supporters who are wilfully ignoring the overwhelming evidence of a Biden win and are continuing to give voice to baseless accusations of fraud.

     Trump has managed, in his usual ungracious way, to demean and sully the institutions of the country he is supposed to lead and the photo opportunities that he affords are worthy of a tin pot dictator from one of the ‘shithole’ countries that he has racially denigrated.

     His determined denial of reality does no one any good.  At a time of catastrophic numbers of Covid infections and deaths, the story is not one of united federally-led attempts to get to grips with the pandemic, but rather the nurturing of the battered ego of a proven loser; a one term president; a failure in the Electoral College; a massive loser in the popular vote.   

     Trump is a petty criminal turned leader in something of the same way as Brecht’s Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui showed an ironic picture of a 1930s Chicago gangster taking control of the cauliflower market. 

     Trump of course was funded to the tune of millions by his KKK supporting father, he never had to claw his way up – he was born up, and after a string of business failures he is still there.

     I have not known many millionaires, but one vouchsafed his financial wisdom to me saying, “You’ve got to keep your money working.  You’ve got to keep your financial balls in the air, keep them moving.  And the great, the really great trick, is knowing when to run!” 

     Trump doesn’t run.  He offloads his failures onto other people, his smaller creditors; or he manages to finagle finance so that the banks and lenders find themselves unable to let him fail without courting disaster themselves.  What sort of financial genius is able to go bankrupt owning a casino?  Trump did, and still managed to preserve a reputation as a financial wizard as people were taken in by the razmataz rather than a healthy balance sheet.   

     Trump has ruthlessly used his position as president to augment his personal finances and those of his family, he has behaved like an autocrat, a Russian oligarch – but without their style and sophistication.  The vulgarian believes, still, that he is untouchable, that his word creates reality.

     His fairy tale (more Brothers Grimm than Anderson) has gone on long enough, it is time to wake up from the fantasy world that the Orange Outrage lives in.  He has lost the presidency.   

     The New Year is going to be very cold for him as the financial realities that he has managed to deny become an everyday part of his beleaguered existence.

     But, one thing we should never forget, is a list of those Republican enablers who have fed and continue to feed Trump’s delusions.  Their lust for power has swept away their decency and they should never be allowed to forget just how far they fell.

 

On a much more creative note, I have taken delivery of two framed pictures of drawing in ink and pencil by Ceri Auckland Davies – a generous birthday present and I will post pictures of them tomorrow.

Life is often not very fair

Schadenfreude.

 

That is one of those complicated looking German words that one really ought to know, apparently, like Aufklärung and Verfremdungseffekt – and be prepared to use them in context.

 

I can remember using Aufklärung in my history essays for ‘A’ level (after painstakingly learning the spelling) more for the effect of throwing in an unaccustomed umlaut and making my rather mundane understanding of European history and the Enlightenment seem just a little more sophisticated. 

 

Although I read a lot about Verfremdungseffekt in my extensive reading of Brecht, having decided that he was one of the easier alternatives as a ‘banker’ question in my Drama Paper in my finals – though I have to be truthful, I have looked up the spelling of the word and in my critical writing I always used the easier term of ‘alienation’ – which was also easier to spell. 

Incidentally, I always consider my greatest two achievements in my finals papers was spelling Houyhnhnms (the intelligent and logical horses in Gulliver’s bitter, misanthropic IVth Voyage) correctly, and quoting four lines of C17th French poetry in my response to Sir Thomas Browne.  I also quoted freely from one of Brecht’s more obscure plays, which my tutor said summed up my response!

Anyway, Schadenfreude came to mind as I left my Catalan lesson in the centre of Castelldefels to unlock my bike and make my way home.  In the pouring rain.

I have never wilfully ignored an opportunity to remind my British friends that I like by the side of the Mediterranean, constantly bathed in sunlight, with good food and cheap wine.

Now the cheap wine is forbidden; my food should be low fat and salt free – and it bloody rained.  How more Schadenfreude could it be?

Well, yesterday I got a registered letter, for which I had to sign, that informed me that I had been ‘imaged’ speeding along the road that runs alongside the Olympic Canal and that I had been fined €300 and two points!

Is this injustice?  My speed was not excessive (in my mind) for this road and (you can hear the whine in my voice) everybody else in the entire world that uses the road goes at the same speed.  So, does this mean that virtually the entire population of Castelldefels has also been signing for a letter that informs that they have been excessive and please to pay the money into the city coffers?

I do think that the totally unrealistic speed limits are there to ensure that the cash cow can be milked at any moment that the city needs a cash injection.

It is also significant that the date of the infringement was a month ago, and on a Saturday.  Since that date the city has installed or constructed or imposed two zebra crossing ramps (that I am convinced are higher than the legal regulations allow – but let it pass, let it pass) that make going at even a snail’s pace difficult.  Add to that the existence of those thoroughly irritating rubber strips at regular intervals along the same road, then it seems as if the municipality is waging an active war against the suspension systems of all motor cars within the city.

And then there is paying the extortion.  The single sheet of the demand came with a bar code that should mean it is possible to pay at a cash machine because they have a little window that reads bar codes.   

And while we are angry (as we are) those cash machines only exist because the banks are viciously mean and hate their customers so much that they reduce all opportunities to interact with them in person.  And then they dress up this glaring lack of concern by telling us that these machines exist for our convenience!  Huh!  As if.  When was the last time that a bank, any bank, did anything altruistic that was not directly linked to their own essential well-being!  And the machine did not read the code and gave a brusque message that basically nothing could be done, so find another way to pay, not specified by the machine.

So, for me at the moment, the old feelings of Schadenfreude are in the ascendant.  This too will pass, but, even though it is negative, it should be possible to find a sort of twisted enjoyment in the negative.  Perhaps the momentary nature of misery should be appreciated as well as that of pleasure – which, after all, is just as fleeting.

And, owning a tumble drier, it is hardly a problem to strip off wet clothes and throw them all in the drier for a few minutes to get them warmly dry again.  Which I did, down to and including my underpants.  And then the door buzzer sounded and it was the post-lady with a package for us.  So, dressed fetchingly in a hastily grabbed pair of summer swimming trunks and a hooded rain jacket, I wetly opened the front gate to get the stuff and returned even more wetly thinking to myself that Schadenfreude really doesn’t give up!

And (again), the book that I ordered on Amazon with what I understood would be a one-day delivery promise, will actually arrive at the end of the month.  Underlining the point, I think!

Looking forward to the end of the week when we are scheduled to go to Name Day celebrations, a lunch in Terrassa, and Friday is a half day for Toni and so we can have lunch together to celebrate the start of the weekend properly!