He’s gone. Gone at last. Thank God, Almighty, we are free of him at last. You’ll have to forgive me. I am no friend of the ex-President of the United States. He is a conman, a baby, a bully, an ignoramus. He is narcissistic. He is a disgrace, a horror of a human being. Vain. Vainglorious. A vacuum of intellect. Reptilian brained. Awful. Vicious, mendacious. A calamity. A man who cares for no one and nothing but himself. A shit hole of a person. A soulless cretin. A vulgarian. The worst excess of crassness. A shameful, lying coward.
But thank the Lord, he is not calculating. Rafael Behr writes in The Guardian: “He has the personality of a tyrant , but not the premeditated programme of a dictator. His thirst for power has always been deep, but it is the impulsive craving of a man addicted to attention for its own sake, without the mechanical drive to rearrange society and fashion other people’s destinies in the mould of a Hitler or Stalin. ” In this respect, the damage Trump has inflicted on America’s democracy, though significant, has been more accidental than deliberate – the result of theatricality, self-absorption and capriciousness. This time, America has been lucky and it has survived a four year, highly damaging and exposing assault on its institutions. This time, America got away with it. This time, the fragility of its democracy and the fact that the whole edifice relies on the complicity of well meaning, well behaved and law abiding leaders has been saved. If it tangles with a cleverer, more methodical tyrant-tendencied President, America as we know it will crumble. Trump was a warning shot to reinforce the Constitution.
There are other pillars of the US system exposed by Trump that need overhaul. No one landed a punch on him these last four years. No one. He did appalling things, things which offend all norms of decency – the list of his crimes, misdemeanours, actions, behaviour, spite, barefaced lies, accusations, gaslighting, hounding, incitements, vitriol and dog-whistling, law breaking, tax evading, scapegoating, groping, objectifying, insulting, showboating, brazen bribery – and nothing happened to him. He didn’t suffer even a scratch. The toothless White House lobby was cowed. The Senate, obedient, spineless. Congress, frustrated, impotent. Investigations, inconclusive or unable to find the smoking gun. Doctors and the legal officers of America – people everyone needs to trust – compliant. All those sacked members of his administration, too numerous to list, fired brickbats – all of them bounced off Trump. His justifiably bitter lawyer – all wind and no fire. The ex-heads of communication, campaign leaders, heads of the intelligence services, Secretaries of State, Defence, Chiefs of Staff, chief strategists, even his niece – all published books, exposes and gave briefings of life behind the scenes in the Trump White House. Whatever was exposed, whoever was saying it and however close they had been to the Child in Chief, not one punch landed. Nothing hurt him. Not even Covid-19. Not even Bob Woodward, slayer of evil Presidents past or the New York Times’ expose of Trump’s tax affairs cut through the teflon. How can so many people have missed so many open goals? The conventional weaponry of American democracy has been found woefully wanting, unable to stand against irrationality, shamelessness, disregard for decency or a political party which sells its soul for expediency rather than plays the long game on priciple. Legal recourse and the checks and balances on despotism are flaccid and withered and have been out manoeuvred. They are in severe need of root and branch reinvention. If they go unreformed and they face an even more menacing threat – a Trump-like figure bereft of buffoonishness, a real, bona fide demagogue with a plan – we will all be in real peril.
There is another lesson to be learned from the last four years. Trump has spent a lifetime conjuring the image of being a smart businessman. A smart businessman that speaks like the silent majority. That suffers like the silent majority as the plaything of the professional politicians of the “swamp” (Washington DC). That distrusts the establishment and all its on-the-surface polite but hypocritical shibboleths, conventions and protocols. He is the little guy, but with big money and a big mouth. He cries ‘foul’ on the chattering classes’ consensus that has defined the post war political era. He represents all the people who don’t drive BMWs, who feel overwhelmed by outsiders, who hate seeing their jobs disappear offshore, who lose loved ones in needless and endless wars overseas, who see the inhabitants of coastal America more focused on the affairs and wellbeing of citizens of other countries than those of their own hinterland.
To these people he gave a voice. To these people he appears more competent at running America and at taking care of America’s business than all those professional politicians – a vital advantage when the main issue dominating the election was not Covid or race but the economy. Those professional politicians who subsidise the Rest Of The World with handouts and contributions from hard earned tax dollars to international bodies such as the UN and WHO, who undermine American industry’s competitiveness with trade deals that favour other nations in the name of free trade, who grandstand with their ethics to keep relations frigid with unsavoury regimes whilst demanding the people pay the price of such moral superiority with their children’s lives on the battlefield. The political, liberal elite who ignore their own people and favour every minority under the sun over John Doe. For them, Trump speaks. He represents their rage at being ignored for decades.
Like I say, I ain’t a fan. Trump comes over as the manure-mouthed, self-proclaimed Messiah of Mid-America, spewing policy sewage into every pool of modern life. He is a vile and verbally violent poseur, a posturist, a panderer to base instincts and fury. He is the toilet – albeit gold plated – into which all the pent up effluent of an angry and dispossessed America pours and overflows. He is no friend of civilised discourse or normal societal decency, tolerance and compassion. And I am for those things. But such values have delivered nothing for many people. They have been empty virtue signalling for much of America – turned outwards to everyone but Americans. For the silent majority, these publicly espoused values have meant suffering, ineffectuality, empty promises, joblessness – the mirage of a new Camelot which only the well educated, monied and privileged can actually participate in and enjoy.
So whilst I hate the messenger and I disagree with the answers delivered as alternatives to the liberal way, I do not hate the people who have found the voice that vents their frustrations. In this chink of commonality, in this empathy with those who have never been asked to sup at the table, might lie the possibility of a new way. And a new way is what’s called for. If everything just returns to normal with Biden and all we liberals just breathe a sigh of relief and say “phew, thank the Lord that’s over”, an even more gold plated, vulgarian version of him, will arise. And this one will be here for good because we liberals will never be trusted again and this time, he or she will have a plan.