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.
