Skip to main content

NO SILVER LINING

THE STORM-TRUMPERS CHEER THEIR MONSTROUS WIN
The old adage that history repeats, the second time as farce, almost rhymes with this nasty nightmarish moment, the election of President Trump by a whitelash landslide, except the American Caligula now in our midst - the most dangerous and dishonest person to be democratically elected to such a powerful leadership role since WW2 - is no farcical figure.
 
Comedians might wryly note that Donald J Trump is very presidential - he has the moral compass of Nixon, the sexual ethics of Bill Clinton, the intelligence of George W Bush, the cultural sophistication of Reagan, the political experience of Eisenhower, and the family-decency of Kennedy - but this approach lacks depth or clarity.  There has actually never been a president like Trump before. There may never be a presidency, again, after him.
 
There are two ways to treat this most horrible of events - and one is with cautious optimism; however, since this blog correctly predicted that Trump would win, we also wish to err on the side of cautious pessimism.  There is very little in the Trump resume to suggest any other way. It is possible, of course, that, like last night's muted acceptance speech, he can now moderate his Barnum-like excesses, and prove to be a capable, even strong, manager and CEO of America Ltd.
 
Trump, however, ran a campaign marked by too many evils to be let off that lightly.  We need not repeat his offenses here - but it is alleged he is a child rapist; a serial sexual offender; a sociopath; a bully; a cruel and vengeful man; a selfish egomaniac; a cheat and liar; and arguably, a hate-monger and exhorter to violence. He has flirted with the far-right, and white supremacist symbols.
 
His win was obvious to anyone who understands the Nixon silent majority plan to recruit a block of white, male, working class, bigoted, and angry voters; Pat Buchanan and his pitchfork revolution wanted to do this decades before; Newt Gingrich tapped this same vein. Reagan, also. As we have seen, there is a slim majority of adult Americans who apparently want a racist, woman-hating bully in power. So, after America's mostly noble experiments, we now see the American soul yearns like the Russian peasant for a potent father-figure, a Tsar.
 
Trump ran openly as a father figure - as a potent male - and did not hide his belligerent, highly-sexed, driven Darwinian aspects. He is the Uber-American. And the people who voted for him in droves knew this yesterday, and they cheered. Tragically, a relatively good woman, Mrs Clinton, has been defeated. She was no saint, but she was smart, capable, and has spent her entire life trying to improve life for many, especially children, and women. She is too complex and ambitious to be considered a likeable person - which was her downfall - but buried depths of racism and woman-hate drove the attacks upon her.
 
Anyone who does not see this as the worst moment in the history of the West since the death of Kennedy, or Dr King, about 50 years ago - or even since 1933 - is being naïve.
 
The new Republican army has all three power levers in the US government now, and can destroy environmental laws, stack the Supreme Court with bigots, tear down all the fine achievements of the Obama years; cause wars, religious and civil strife; stoke racism; and permit other tyrannies to prosper, unchecked. The level of spiritual and intellectual poverty on display in this election is actually vomit-inducing.
 
It is true that such anger and ignorance can only be bred in swamps of neglect; and that the establishment has much to answer for, as with Brexit. But now, the UK and America are under the sway of populist anti-rational movements, and worse is yet to come.
 
I fear for all those decent Americans - a majority of women, Hispanic, African-American, and Millennial, voters - who hoped to follow the decency of the Obama terms with a reasonably sane President.  Washington, DC is now Berlin, just before the night of the long knives.  What purges to come, what intolerance, what walls, what wars, what blood running in the streets? Shame on all who did this.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".