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!”

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.

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.

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!

Guessing the time

 

The clocks have changed and so my schedule or my itinerary or my sequence of what I do in the morning has been changed too.  The timings are the same, but the circumstances different.  To be specific – it’s the sun.  As I am now swimming an hour ‘later’ than I was last week I can no longer time myself by sunshine.

I have a needlessly complicated way of swimming.  Not my stroke, that was, is and shall be (if I say so myself) a reasonably elegant crawl – though that looks like an oxymoron, now that I’ve written it.  Anyway, owing to the evils of capitalism one of the apps on my Pebble watch has ceased to be supported.  Pebble is by far the best value of smartwatches, with the longest battery life and an always-on screen.  But, alas, the tense in that last sentence is non-operable as the whole enterprise of Pebble was sold to Fitbit and they seem to have supressed the make in favour of their own productions.  Not one of which, I might add, matches the value of the Pebble!

So, my Pebble, that used to count the lengths of my swim and give various other pieces of information that I never used, is now non-operational.  I therefore rely on time.  Even if I am swimming with little enthusiasm, I manage to get my 1,500m or metric mile done in a few minutes under 40, so to swim for 40 minutes ensures that I complete the full length.  I do not, however, like looking at my watch to see how much I have completed.  Instead I use my internal clock and make a laboured game of guessing when the 40 minutes is up.

What I do is set a point that I choose when my body tells me that the time is almost up and, from that point, I swim an extra six lengths.  In the penultimate length of that six, I evaluate how well and fluently I have swum, judge my physical well being, respond to the tell-tale aches and stitches that suggest whether I have exerted myself enough or not.

 

In the last of the six lengths I try and estimate the time – having noted the time at the start of my swim.  So, I add on the 40 minutes to get the time I should finish and then I guestimate the actual time.  Well, you have to understand that swimming is not the most intellectually stimulating form of exercise and you have to find interest where you can!

The number of times that I have been spot on with my guestimate is very limited, but I count it a success if I am within five minutes of the actual finishing time.  I tell myself that I should be able to work out time from experience and from those physical indications that I (as the body’s owner) should know.  Sometimes, I am woefully out in my estimates and that just goes to show that the state of a person’s body is in a constant state of flux.

Sometimes after a rare day’s absence, or an even rarer two-day absence, I can tell that I have been lazing rather than exercising as the effort needed is appreciably more than if I had been more diligent in my exercise.  But, oddly, after a period of time not swimming I sometimes swim with an ease and fluidity that seems to benefit from abstinence!  Bodies are complex things, god wot!

Getting up at the ungodly hour of 6.10 am, in darkness, I at least had the experience of swimming into daylight which, when the light was strong, I knew that my swim was over.  Now, my swim begins as the light is dawning – my body or brain is now forced to find other indicators (apart from the watch on my wrist) to guess the end of my swim.  This uncertainty adds a certain something to what is, after all, a tedious form of exercise.

I am still coming to terms with my ‘extended’ day, and in that rush of activity concentrated into the first three hours of waking, I find that I have done my household chores before the shops are open!  I then feel vaguely guilty if I am not up and doing for the rest of the day!

My poetry is languishing.  I have notebooks full of ideas but they are waiting for me to make something of them.  There are two books that need to be prepared for publication and extra pieces of writing that are stubbornly not flowing out via the computer keys.

I am still using the inexplicable non-issuing of permission (indeed the complete lack of response from the requisite authorities) to use reproductions of paintings in MNAC as a reason to delay the whole book that should have been published by now.  This is not satisfactory and I know (and I am telling myself here!) that I should simply plough ahead and take the consequences!

And that is good advice!

Confusion of things

 

 

From where I sit, my right hand can stretch forth and get an iPad, a Kindle, stationery, a Spanish dictionary, a rubber band ball, reading glasses, a Snow White tin of pens, pencils and markers, earphones, wipes for glasses, a magnifying glass, a Bluetooth loudspeaker, pills, a Catalan dictionary and so on.  My left hand can reach out and encompass more pens, pencils and markers, a ‘spare’ mobile phone, an internet radio, usb hub, a three-drawer trolley which is filled with even more impedimenta.

So why, I ask myself, when I needed to write down book details from an article that I was reading on the Internet, did I scribble them down with a stub of a pencil on the back of an envelope?  Within the scope of both right and left hands there is a stick-it note pad and more writing implements than I can ever need during the course of a normal day.  So why, when something is needed did I make do with the makeshift?

I have to admit that I am only slowly becoming a user of the mobile phone.  I don’t mean that in any ordinary sense, I have had a mobile phone for a long time and have changed my phones with a regularity that had brought delight into planned obsolescence hard-hearted capitalists through the years.  I also have to admit that I have rarely used the mobile phone as, well, a mobile phone. 

In the early years when the functions of the phone were really limited to making and receiving calls, I think that my possession of such a machine was more of a status symbol than anything else.  And, of course, because it was a gadget and therefore it was something that I had to possess.

Now that mobile phones do so much more than merely allow people to connect via voices, I find that I use the ‘phone’ function even less than I used to.  I read The Guardian on my phone, I read books, I use the Internet,

I play games (I am ashamed to admit that I am something of an addict of Candy Crush – it encourages that partial mindlessness that is so relaxing) and I take photos. 

The first time someone actually phoned me on my present phone (a Huawei P20 Pro) I couldn’t work out how to answer it and had to phone the person back after I managed to cut her off with all my frantic finger prodding of the screen.  My purchase of the P20 Pro (and I had to look up the name of the damn thing on the Internet to get it right, and that indicates where my prejudices lie!) was largely influenced by the fact that there were lots of lenses on the back of the case and that the camera had been developed in association with Leica – and, let’s face it, that is about as far as I am likely to get to owing a real one.  So, I bought it because it was a camera that I could read, so to speak.

But I still have the remnants of what one might call the ‘Box Brownie’ mentality where each photograph taken was using up part of the film that one had threaded (with care and difficulty) onto the spindles.  Each photograph had to be developed, each photograph was precious and expensive, its quality being linked to the fact that a photograph was part of a slow laborious process, there was nothing instant about it: buying the film, using the film, developing the film all combined to give an almost ritualistic feel to the whole rigmarole of taking a photograph.

Now digital photos are truly instant – though the physicality of what used to be the photograph has now all but disappeared: the camera is the photograph.  When was the last time that I actually printed out a photograph that I had taken?  The fact that I have to think about it (and I am still thinking about it) shows how long ago that was and what an occasion it must have been!

But I still behave as if each photograph was on film, as if each skeuomorphic[1] click (or whatever recorded sound you have playing on your phone) was the introduction of an element of cost in the production of a concrete piece of visual information.  But, nowadays, the camera is used as an aide memoire, as something to be used casually and then discarded as a visual reminder.

Which brings us back to the back of the envelope.  It didn’t occur to me to take a shot of the screen, or even a screen shot (as if I knew how to do that!) and save it for future use.  For something like book information, I needed to be the ideal of the scholar that I will never be, and scribble something down, to make it real, so that at a later date I could riffle through all my notes and marginalia and references and play at learning!

But, there is a function in all this writing: I find that things are more real when I read about them – even if I am reading what I have just written!  So, this might be taken to be a note to myself to make my life easier and remember that a digital photo, is just a free(ish) image that is just as useful, if not more so, that a fugitive scrap of paper that is in constant danger of being tidied up and lost.

As if I haven’t lost things on the computer, or on the phone.  But that is for another blog!

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[1]

It is thanks to the Open University and a unit on Greek vases that I came across the word Skeuomorphic and I wholeheartedly recommend this essay because it says something about ancient tastes and a twisted modern interpretation of what they might have been at the same time.  It is a good read: https://www.academia.edu/8587519/Skeuomorphism_in_ancient_Greece_a_cost_analysis