Trumponia

Trump?

“Trump supports gay,” was chanted at convention.

The suggestive thing about Trump is that history doesn’t seem to matter. What he says last week is often contradicts what he says now. Thus rules of critique don’t apply. There is only, with Trump, the ever present now, protean as the wind. In this he fashions his appeal. Some say he looks like Mussolini. Some say he looks like a tramp. 'Tramps for Trump' is only a heartbeat away from 'I love the poorly educated.' Yet not only does he survive, he flourishes.

But a lack of support among the black population and the dissidence of women bears down on his thin skin. With his desperate shrill - proof that he is losing, and bluster he attacks like a rabid dog sadly diseased and incurable. The quiet rage of migrants, who though it would be previous to say are more radical, but generally are, do at least know a fraud when they see one. Added then are the accretions of braggadocio. It may not matter so much his ban on Muslims, but when added to a wall to stop a stampede that doesn't exist, or the fiction of crime waves, or an imagined American getting raped at the hands of international sodomites, or the endless spasms of his old-chap prejudice, there comes a calculus of these spurts of machismo that does, and will, add. 

On the other hand it must be said it is churlish to compare him, as some do, to Hitler or Mussolini. No doubt he has fascist leanings, no doubt he plays the strong-man game, but he neither could be nor has the mind for dictatorship, in principle because given power he would not have a clue what to do with it. 

So too are the comparisons that Clinton and Trump are like Apollo and Dionysus, except in one detail. The teetotaler Trump is making people drunk with wish-thought, time-travel, fact-freedom, fancy-flight and empowerment of embarrassing stupidity, so much so that the revellers will mutter and stutterer out any nonsense, non-sequitur, incoherency and bigotry happy they have a champion who will dance with all the satyrs of chauvinist yesteryear. He brings all the bones long buried back to life with his applause lines of hysteria, his narrow vision of the future based on a narrow vision of the past. The small lanes of victory are surely Clinton’s yet… ah these febrile years, this topsy-turvy world, these poll-failed times… perhaps the criticisms of her being Apollonian are unjust, but surely, surely the world needs wise heads, surely common-sense…surely...surely...Hillary.

So never in recent times has the Whitehouse race been so antonymic. Trump: 50’s man, nativist, isolationist, über-menshen. Clinton: 60’s woman, globalist, inclusive, boring to the point of faded tapestry. The victor this November is not just R or D. Victorious shall be also which vision of America will live and which will die. Will it be the progressive young future that celebrates, or the revanchist old white man spluttering into the sunset who suddenly gets given the reins of power and can’t believe his luck, buck-wild with his jumping horse and jumpy gun? Will the black have his rights and expectations renewed, or removed? Will the Mexican have his path to citizenship acceded to or will the flash lights wake him up? Will divisions cleave deeper or will society grow with far-sight and large heart?

Alas, the tea leaves this year have been of a poor crop. We shall wait until November and hold our breath. We should be prepared for the outré Trump, as we have had to adjust to the unthinkable, senseless, stupid and backward Brexit. Should the confidence machine he is win, we must remember the sky shall not fall nor shall the Universe reach that point of absurdity where it implodes on itself. No indeed, we, in Churchillian whistle, would ‘keep buggering on’.

  ~ “And this too shall pass.” ~

Honor

You ask me what is wanting in this world? Well, dear one, I can't answer that but I can suggest something which is necessary for our culture: Both the word and value of, Honor.

First I will state my definition of Honor and then expand upon why I think it's necessary for progress, equanimity and hope:

- To not commit a crime even when you can do so with impunity
- To not take advantage even when you can do so without ill conscience
- To not violate your morality even when man and law are blind and deaf.

Now I will tell of why such a value should be reappraised in our culture. I do so with an example.

There is a story of the two young Syrian soldiers. They are standing in the middle of a road and they are joking and laughing to each other. A boy is playing in the street some hundred yards off. Their thoughts begin to collect and they laugh and shake hands on a bet. Is the bet about a sports game? A girl? An adolescent dear? No. One of the soldiers raises his rifle and takes aim. The bullet when it strikes goes clean through the boy's head. The other soldier pulls out his wallet, slowly, and gives some notes to the shooter. He sighs and then they both burst into a sad, liberating frenzy of laughter.

My sweet, it is a true story. It happened in the name of Assad.

There are two points:

1. These two young men would not have done what they had if they were not soldiers, given license to kill, in the middle of war, knowing they would fear no justice.
2. More critical to our point, if they had valued honour, if their culture had sold it as the thing all real people should have, if their society had put a premium on it and bred the idea, as a little shine among stars, they would have never even contemplated such a thought let alone let it run on to action.

Many may say that such a word and value is too old hat, too old fashioned, too much the stuff of twee, too old for our hefty march of progress. Yet our culture puts a premium on the superficial, the banal, the frivolous, the inane. Our culture is dense with stupidity. Our politics leaden with cynicism. Our populace not even close to realising potential. Our world stultified with junk food, junk bodies, junk minds full of junk ideas. Failed ideas. There is always better, though we don't know what that looks like we know it is better and head for it. Honor, and its corollary honesty, at least will deal in even hands; at least tally truth and reality together. Be forthright and true then, and sell it to everyone you meet. A true friend is the only friend who pulls you up when you are wrong. Honor is a handshake amongst true friends.

My dear, even if we fell into a thousand years of darkness and even if the forces of fear, power and poverty overwhelm, if a man or woman acts with Honor, such a world as we know shall not be lost.

I go back to the Syrians. It is tragedy for the boy. It is tragedy for the soldier. Because he will in time, remember the moment he killed a child for caprice. A thing, you must know see, Honor would have stopped.

Pericles Among The Russians

Today Russia is a one party state with a one man rule. Russian revanchism was perhaps always destined after the fall of the the Soviet Union and especially after the basket case economy of the 1990's. There was a chance, if Boris Yeltsin had had the benefits of the land's oil revenue, to bring the new Russiskaya Federatsya out of squalor. But such opportunities were vetoed by corporate America through the charming gauche face of President Clinton. In the 90's the exact number of oil assets the Russian government controlled was 0. Private America controlled them and gave the Russian government a pittance which barely paid the grain.

And so, Vladimir Putin. In office in the year 2000, had, by what is only natural, all the oil assets nationalised soon after. In 1951 Mohammad Mosaddegh began to nationalise the oil assests of Iran only to be deposed two years later by MI6/CIA. Putin would not suffer Mosaddegh's fate, as Russia was too big, being former pole of a once bi-polar world. Yet Putin felt white heat all the same. If Clinton wanted Russia to be an ally why was he complicit in pushing it to beggary?

If our premise in this article is the force of your history condemns you then, it must seem the dictator was never going to join the comity of western, democratic, progressive joys. Instead, inheriting the "dictatorship of the proletariat", and before that the "serfdom of the Tsar". Can it be that Russia cannot understand democracy? Are we to expect democracy in communist China, which has been autocratic since primitive man?

America's independence in 1776 or Britain's parliamentary sovereignty in 1649 or France's provisional committees in the 1790's were all the sharp relief of the people. Russia's moment came in 1917. But the Russian uprising took Marx, deciding to lump the privations of capitalism in with the Occidental concepts of rights, representation, law, free press and enquiry. Forgetting the contradictory term of 'the people's dictatorship', why wasn't Lenin impressed by Jefferson? Why did workers consider the democratic model contemptible? If it's because the Tsar represented the same European order, then the Bolsheviks lacked key detail. There was presented the perennial dilemma, was it the system that needed fixing or the system that needed replacing. Today's question is, is it Globalisation that needs repairing, or replacing? Is it the Establishment that needs remaking or revolting against? These surely are questions of the surface. Isn't it populism precisely that's the problem? Of course we should be able to elect Pericles, but we do so knowing he was born and bred for the task. A populist candidate championing populist commotion will never solve a jigsaw puzzle, let alone a countries problems. How can everyone rule? This is facetious. A Few may rule, not all. That is Law. The real struggle is the ancient one, rich and poor.

Thus, Putin overturning the American rape of oil and inheriting a failing state without any form of democracy in its history and a people used to the directive from the 'boss', was it perhaps always an optimists daydream that Russia become the newborn nephew of democracy? 

Putin can last until 2024 or he could be out by 2018. In a kind of thinking his position is anathema. He's been at it too long already. The real question is when he goes, will Russia finally see the benisons of true democracy, or will history condemn the Russian once more tethered to the Tsar?

Sovereignty Is King.

In 1642 a campaign began between two sides of an argument: Where sovereignty lays. Is it the king or the parliament? In 2016 a referendum was held which lay a similar question. Is sovereignty in London or Brussels?

The king paid a capital price for his stubbornness. When the head left the trunk, Parliament was sovereign. In 1992 that same parliament ceded part of its sovereignty. Now arises the question whether that same parliament will see it returned in. 

There is a very imperishable quality in the English character that explains why this contentious point of sovereignty nettles the British where it merely tickles the French. Perhaps the British prize their sovereignty the greatest because of the Europeans they have had it the longest. And perhaps the Europeans have, by nature and history, a more acquiescent and flexible nature to power structures. Consider, Germany wasn't a country until 1871. Italy the same year. The Benelux countries where part of first the Holy Roman Empire, then the Austro-Hungarian. France was amputated by England until 1558 and had had been invaded in both world wars. England, was invaded last in the ubiquitously known 1066. Alors, is it possible the English don't like to be ruled over by any but the English and the Europeans don't take it so much to heart? However, notice, I say English. There is the Scottish question.

Is it a surprise Scotland has voted by 62% by district unanimously for the EU? No, for this reason. Invaded countries don't mind the supranational over them. Independent countries abhor it. Scotland wasn't a properly its own country until around 1338 and then lost that independence formally in the Act of Union in 1707. Scotland is pro-EU because it has known union already. The same is true for Northern Ireland. 

Thus, England. Proud Albion! Independent since 1066, the first taste of elective sovereignty in 1649. Germany last unified in 1990. Is it a small wonder the English prize their independence so? 

But this referendum wasn't just about sovereignty. Immigration. Putting aside the fact Europe is connected by land mass and so travel between states there is easier and more accepted. And putting aside the theory of island nations being more xenophobic, as exemplified by the Japanese, what is it in the English that adores the national and dislikes the foreign? From the Tory rural to the Romford geezer. Why do the English flinch for foreignness? I don't pretend a comprehensive answer here. Perhaps foreignness presents a threat to long held cherished independence? Perhaps the absence of the foreign in much of England's history compared to the fluidity of European borders and orders, makes the English fearful. Fearful of new orders, new systems to which Europe has old hat with. The English cherish their old ways, and who knows perhaps this stubbornness has its advantage. 

Now, you may say a word or two concerning the Nordic countries. Were they not also largely independent? Well, yes but Norway is not part of the EU and Sweden and Denmark still retain their currency. Finland, part of the EU and the Euro, was part of Russia until 1917. So, those that have been the longest independent value their independence more than those whose concept of independence, unification and sovereignty are more recent in history. Is it thus any great wonder that the head of the supranational organisation of the EU is headed in Brussels, the capital of a country independent only since 1830?

The UK's giant leap into the unknown was a risk the generally risk adverse English retreat from. When the choice touches the jugular of their ancient rights, an Englishman thinks the risk worth it. 

In 1649 Oliver Cromwell created a new concept, perhaps pregnant in many minds at the time. In 2016 Britain is reminded of this. And yet even though all the rational arguments clearly demonstrate remaining in the EU, and given that few of those who chose leave had much in the way of cogent argument, Britain has voted leave and did so because their gut told them to. A gut constructed by a history where sovereignty is king.