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Showing posts with label idiot savant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label idiot savant. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Saying something trying to be nice





I am going to try hard, and do my very best not to be abusive as I write about Trump.

I let that sentence stand as a paragraph to remind myself of my starting point as I continue to type!  But, truly Trump has exceeded the normal bounds of political discourse and has put in place something new and, I am going to say, ‘exhilarating’.

On the positive side, Trump has shown that you need have no experience in politics or local, city, state or national governance to become Head of State.  He has shown, truly, that everyone has a chance.  For someone as seemingly unprepared and unqualified (no, I did use the word “seemingly” so I am still being sort-of polite) he illustrates graphically that the top job is not the reserve of those who have worked a lifetime to get there.  People must look at Trump and say, “There, but for the fact that he got there before me, goes I!”


Resultado de imagen de marshal's baton france

Was it not Napoleon who said, “Every French soldier carries a marshal’s baton in his knapsack”?   The clear implication being that everyone, no matter how ‘low’ had the potential to become great.  And those words were said by an Emperor - the Little Corsican, risen to greatness!

Trump’s speeches may be, let’s be generous, “free-wheeling”, but he constantly hits the spot with his base and, although he has very low approval ratings generally, he is still riding high with the people who originally voted for him.  He knows (even he knows) that he did not get a majority of the votes cast in his election, not by millions, but he is now the President and not Clinton.  The Electoral College may be an anachronistic absurdity, but that is the system and that system got him elected.  We have the same sort of result in some elections in Britain where the party of government did not win the popular vote, but they did get the greatest number of members of parliament – and that is the system with which we have to work.

So Trump knows that “The Liberal Establishment” (whatever that might be) can say and do what it likes because he knows that it will have little effect on the forces that elected him.  Rather like the Daily Mail for me: it may be the most read newspaper in the country and have a mythical reach in articulating the voice of the disturbed right, but it might as well not exist for me because I NEVER read it.  Even when it is given away free at airports I shun its rancid pages.  So, for me, the Daily Mail can say what it likes, it doesn’t actually touch me. 
 
Yes, I know that the pernicious influence of the rag constantly corrupts our political discourse, but I, a confirmed Guardian reader disdainfully ignore it.  And that is part of the reason that Brexit happened.  As I continue to live my arts-heavy, opera going, European life style I have failed to notice or to take proper account of those who do not have, and may never have or want, the luxury of sitting in a stalls seat in the latest performance in the Liceu in Barcelona These are the people who may never have, to get slightly more real than opera seats, the right to a decent pension, or education or health service.

If you see a bleak future in which you are probably going to be worse off than your home owning parents then you look around for someone or something to blame.  And history teaches that, in the short term, the obvious victims are The Others.  Those people who are different: skin colour; religion; sexuality; politics; language; nationality – anything that can be shown to be a threat.

In this respect Trump is an idiot savant – and I don’t think that is a real insult, even if it does have the word ‘idiot’ in it.  After all, I am well educated, articulate, reasonably intelligent and sociable, but the highest ‘0ffice’ that I ever had was the largely ceremonial post of President of the Cardiff branch of The National Union of Teachers – where the real work was done by the Secretary and the Treasurer.  I chaired meetings and had headed notepaper!  And Trump is President of the United States of America after inheriting vast sums of money and becoming a reality show front.  Whatever else he doesn’t know, he certainly does know what buttons to press.


Resultado de imagen de enoch powell caricature steadman

A key exponent of button pressing was Enoch Powell, most particularly in his ‘Rivers of blood’ speech.  Yes, I have read the whole speech and, yes I know that the key phrase did not actually occur in the actual talk he gave.  The whole episode is extremely distasteful, though, taken as a whole the speech is more reasonable than the fabricated extract by which it is known.  But Powell was no idiot, even in those far off days he knew a thing or two about ‘soundbites’ and he knew which parts would be taken up by the press and he knew the consequences.  Or at least he thought he did.  He could defend himself from accusations of outright racism by reference to the speech as a whole, but he could not defend himself from the political consequences of such a speech, that such inflammatory comments for general consumption would be. 

For me Powell will, for ever, be associated in my memory with a particularly incisive caricature by Ralph Steadman in Private Eye, which, if anything flatters the man!  

It is said that every politician’s career ends in failure and perhaps that is true of Powell.  After his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, although he was a national figure and idolised by certain sections of the population he was not in government in the cabinet ever again.  Although listened to and respected and reviled he did not have his hands on the levers of power.  He paid the price for his calculated speech.

Trump has said many things that, in their way, are just as astonishing and outrageous as Powell.  He still has his hands on the levers of power.  He has survived and indeed thriven and his standing in the Republican Party is even more secure.  To a large extent the Republican Party IS Trump.  This is an amazing achievement for a person whose statements have been so divisive – and there is the clue.  Division is his stock in trade.  He is not, and does not pretend to be a President of the whole of America.  He plays to his base, and that base is astonishingly accommodating.  He knows that his grasp on power is dependent on that base staying loyal and voting and they have to be fed the right sort of sound bites on a daily basis.

The latest gift to his base is a masterwork.  Today Trump has said that he is minded to end the practise of allowing anybody born in the USA to claim citizenship.  Trump has framed his possible executive order as being one opposed to illegal immigrants who give birth and then their children become citizens.  There have been howls of outrage and assertions that such an executive order would be unconstitutional.  That may or may not be true but it is irrelevant because Trump’s base will have heard yet another strong statement from their champion showing that their views are being held at the highest level in government.  Whether this order actually ever appears is not the important element here, what is important is the timing, so close to the crucial mid-term elections.

This purported action, together with the ‘army’ sent to stop the caravan of potential immigrants making their slow way to the Mexican border and the possibility of a presidential speech on immigration a few days before the elections themselves are all elements in a masterful display of ‘strength’ to energize the base.

If this strategy is the sole idea of Trump then it is a remarkable achievement in inventive marketing.  Ethically dubious certainly, but politically astute.  The fact that it is transparently opportunistic is not important because intention is more real than actuality.  Trump speaks his own reality and if you have bought into his pronouncements then The Word is all you need to know that your concerns are being met.


Resultado de imagen de zeitgeist

I have absolutely no faith that the people of America will produce the Blue Wave that is being hoped for.  None.  Trump has not fabricated the zeitgeist though policy or ideas – he is not creative enough for that, he embodies the zeitgeist, he is the zeitgeist, and if that is true what he does is, and is enough.

God help us all!