For the past few years, when the political situations in Catalonia, Spain and the UK got too much to bear, I turned to the antics of Trump and the Republican party to demonstrate that there were depths that this side of the Atlantic had not yet plumbed. Now that Trump is more of a distant malign emanation from the depths of swampy Florida rather than an ever-present daily horror show in the newspapers, one has to rely on the pathetic, yet entirely disgusting, cavorting (I can’t think of any other word to describe what should be a serious political party) of the Trumpian Republicans in Congress and the Senate to set against whatever depressing failures one sees around the political sites in Spain and the UK.
I have realised that I simply can’t do it anymore, by which I mean reading about Republicans with the semi-detached amazement at the jaw-droppingly callous human distain that they display on a daily basis. I can no longer pretend that the grotesque views that Republican espouse were a function of The Orange Small Handed Horror. Whatever the Republican Party might have been in the past, what it is now is a morass of ante-diluvian viciousness: the anti-abortion, election “rigging”, voter suppression, homophobia, etc etc etc – all the tropes of the far right coming home to roost (if they ever left) in the comfortable prejudices of an apology for a political party. What is happening today is that the repressive idiocies of the Republicans and the super-charged language of political hatred and contempt that they use against their opponents is all too present in the life of politics here in Europe.
The ‘comical’ lies of Trump are more than matched by the serial mendacity of Johnson. Johnson now is a flagrant liar because he makes no attempt to correct the record when he has been found out. And still the Conservatives are ahead in the polls. Why should a liar change his deceit when he doesn’t seem to be penalized for the lies he tells?
England and the USA are cursed with a two-party system: Conservative and Labour; Republican and Democrat. Where do the votes go for those voters who look with something approaching horror at the way that they right wing parties are heading?
In the USA, the rhetoric of the right means that even the mildest of the Democrats is branded as extreme left wing or “Socialist”, whereas here in Europe they would be seen as just left of centre. Old fashioned Tories must shudder to see what the party has become under the “leadership” of the third-rate chancers who now control the Conservatives, but their escape route of the Lib Dems has long since been shown to be a wasted vote and they probably will never bring themselves to vote for Labour, even with that nice Mr Starmer as leader.
The situation is different in Catalonia, where the national conservative part PP has a derisory following and the so-called “centre right” of C’s has also been rejected at the polls. The “”Socialist”” party PSOE and a variety of Independence and left-wing parties hold sway here, but we have no government as the parties have found it impossible to work together to get some sort of coalition off the ground. As the days go by with a government “in functions” the frustration of the voters becomes more and more palpable.
In a way in which I have never felt so strongly before, governments are simply not working; justice is becoming a by-word for partisanship; inequality is becoming more and more pronounced; corruption is rampant and the ordinary voter is made to feel more and more irrelevant as the tiny percentage of the rich and the powerful continue to act with absolute impunity.
The word “Democracy” has become devalued as politicians mouth the word but ignore the concept in the ways in which they behave.
Biden is trying to make a difference. In spite of the torrents of abuse that he has to take as he tries to redress some of the worst excesses of his predecessor’s reign of terror, he is a beacon of hope. But what is going on in the red states of America in the almost comical attempts to gerrymander the political situation to benefit the right is a worry. Biden does not have his full term to make a difference. His majority in the Senate is on a knife edge and if that is taken away by Senate elections next year then we have seen previously that a hypocritical Republican Party will be much more than willing to sacrifice country to the demands of the Party and stymie any bipartisan legislation and wait for 2024 to Bring Back Trump to win again!
The election in Madrid will be an indication here of how the political situation is working. The leader of Madrid at the moment is an unprepossessing Zombie of PP who has made the most remarkable pronouncements in the lead up to the voting. We have an extreme right-wing party which is openly Fascist and revers the late Fascist dictator Franco. The level of political debate is debased. Threats and counter threats depress.
It is very difficult not to be depressed at the prospects for a positive outcome to the election in the febrile atmosphere where everything seems to be tainted by Covid.
But I remain an optimist.
And as long as I stop reading about red-neck, red-state Republicans and concentrate on things like the medical personnel who have worked tirelessly to vaccinate and medicate, then I can always look forward to a communal recognition that unselfish caring is also positive self-regard.
