14th November 2024
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LAUNCELOT: I will send help as soon as I have accomplished a daring and heroic rescue in my own particular…
CONCORDE: Idiom, sir?
LAUNCELOT: …idiom!
– Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail
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Last week, before the US presidential election, there was uncertainty.
(This blog recorded that moment here.)
Few if any people had any idea about what would happen next.
Now many people are getting used to the news of the election, even if they are not happy (to say the least) with what happened.
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For many, the re-election of Donald Trump as president was not how the story of 2016 was supposed to end.
His presidency was supposed to have been a one-off, an aberration. It was to be regarded as a moment of electoral madness, albeit one which has had unfortunate lingering structural effects for the composition of the supreme court and other judicial benches for at least a generation.
In this way the story was seen as similar to that of Brexit in the United Kingdom, where another 2016 moment of electoral madness also had unfortunate lingering structural effects – in that case of the United Kingdom being outside the European Union for at least a generation.
And now, that perhaps comforting sense of distance has been snatched away.
It is instead happening again.
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“Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was, Oh no, not again.”
– The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
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This time round, of course, the rookies of the first presidency are now seasoned veterans – with four years’ experience and a further four years’ reflection of the failures of the first presidency.
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In 1852, Karl Marx wrote of the return of a Napoleon Bonaparte to power in France (emphasis added):
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidière for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances of the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire.”
Given the mishaps of the first Trump presidency, it looks like Marx’s famous maxim should now be adapted to read “the first time as farce, the second time as tragedy”.
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“Here’s where the story ends
Oh, here’s where the story ends
It’s that little souvenir, of a terrible year, which makes my eyes feel sore”
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But.
Nothing is certain in human affairs, and the new presidency may not actually go the way its supporters hope (and the rest of us fear).
Over on Bluesky, the always thoughtful and perceptive “The Stylite” commenter averred the following:
In 2019 in the United Kingdom, of course, the gods punished Boris Johnson by granting him what he wanted – a huge majority and a general election mandate. The “big dog” caught the car.
And soon Johnson was gone, not only from Downing Street but also from Parliament.
What happened in 2016 had created an opportunity for the populists – and 2019 was when that opportunity was flunked.
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Could 2024 be the 2019 of the United States?
In the United States, Trump and the Trumpites are generally oppositional – grievance-mongers and complainers about the Washington elite and so on.
It is not a mindset that adapts well to actual government.
And although there is “Project 2025” – there is otherwise little sense of what the new administration will actually do. The early appointments do not indicate any great seriousness.
Will the gods punish Trump and the Trumpites with also giving them what they want?
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Who knows.
But whatever happens, the old story of Trump’s election in 2016 being a one-off has to be replaced with a new story – one which has not taken shape.
And until and unless those opposed to Trump can make sense of what has happened, then there is little chance that they will revive to take advantage of any failures and disappointments in what is to come – to escape this dreadful moment.
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CONCORDE: Quickly, sir! This way!
LAUNCELOT: No, it’s not in my idiom! I must escape more….
CONCORDE: Dramatically, sir?
LAUNCELOT: …dramatically!
– Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail
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Are we heading for a ‘Yes Minister’ scenario in US politics? Appointing people who don’t know how to ‘work the machine’, and trying to get rid of the machine itself – career civil servants – seems to run the risk of not much getting done.
In the sense of getting constructive and useful stuff done, then yes, you may be right. ‘Yes Minister’ politicians were pretty powerless in the hands of wily Sir Humphrey.
But our American cousins seem to have a mandate over the system in wreaking havoc and stuffing powerful jobs with placemen/ women, creditors and worse.
But often it seems the UK is USA five years behind.
God help us all.
There’s the argument that there is already catastrophically low trust in institutions; having amateurs in charge will not restore that trust but will make it worse, meaning that when there is an administration that actually wants to do stuff, they will no longer have the ‘public buy-in’ that will enable them to do so. Which means that the burn-it-all-down brigade will have won regardless of whatever rear-guard action the rest of us may fight.
And now, some music.
Trump spent much of the last presidency in his Tower of gold ornaments and fittings, in a silk dressing gown watching Fox news incessantly. He hates – beyond words – anyone he suspects of trying to control him; hence the endless parade of new appointments and broken alliances, the allegations of betrayal.
David may well be correct in thinking that the latest Presidential team may have adapted, learned how to ‘manage’ him with charm and flattery (he is said to only respect the views of billionaires), but I suspect that that is nearly impossible over any length of time.
Unlike his first incumbency, this is his ‘legacy term’. Most commentatators believe that it is only the sacred Constitution that holds the USA together, despite its radically sundered socio-economics and profound cultural rifts.
I think we will shortly discover if President Trump is amongst them.
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a” whimper “but a” bang.”
When you look at what they say they will do, and how hugely ambitious and complex it is, you can’t help wondering if they will get bogged down. They intend to deport in excess of 10m people, but I believe that no US government has ever deported as many as 1m in one year. How are they going to do 10m, how long will it take them, and at what direct and indirect cost? Also, how will the ‘law of unintended consequences’ strike when the theory of Musk’s cuts to budgets hits the practical road of cutting government services? Life is complicated, government more so, and a politician’s willingness to suggest that there are radical simple solutions tends to be directly inverse to their understanding of how government works. The trouble is that when the Trumps of this world fail, it’s the fault of the ‘deep state’, or the ‘swamp’, leaving their supporters harbouring revolutionary thoughts based on little more than wishful thinking.
Someone has suggested that what may well happen is that they will pretend to start the process (with some high-profile media blitz raids), and then claim that, oh dear, it can’t be done but instead that all “illegals” will become some sort of “indentured servants” (yeah, you know.) That way they can be returned to the jobs that they are doing (which are necessary) but now with even less than the virtually zero rights they had before.
It can’t possibly work, but I’ve been trying to think of ways they can claim they’ve done what they promised, and this seems like an alarmingly plausible method.
If it is true that for evil to triumph, all that suffices is that good men do nothing, then the trumpists don’t actually have to fulfil much of their stated agenda.
Their primary weapon – ‘control’ of the Supreme Court – is in place, and using that power, they can limit the amount of progressive activity against them.
They don’t have to deport 10 million people – they can just make life miserable for them (and also encourage the populace to do so), and prevent most attempts to counteract that.
Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they let them win an election.
What has happened in America is really the fault of the Brits !
When those Americans refused to dig into their own pockets to pay you taxes for providing their defence you simply cast them adrift in1776 to fend for themselves and just look at the mess you have created !
Your leaders in Britain today should be apologising to the whole world and putting together some sort of military operation to save America from becoming an authoritarian state and a scourge on macro economic growth.
History and Economics can be interpreted in whatever way you wish and this is my point. Sadly I think that the only thing that cannot be contested is that some innocent people are going to die and many are going to be poorer which has always been the case.
That is an interesting angle. I am not sure that Britain let the USA slip its moorings. There was a bit of a war over the issue. It might not be the war that Americans like to think it was – it was more of a civil war between two different sets of British people, with the French on one side. And they were actually rebelling against the British parliament rather than the Crown – George III and North were much less bullish about the importance of getting the colonies to pay their taxes than the Houses of Parliament were.
You are completely right that history can be used to support many arguments. And the victors usually write it.
It’s not the British people’s responsibility to bail out America, a gigantic country compared to our small one because they chose to IGNORE a wannabe dictator and not take him seriously. Make him a celebrity. Allow him to run not once but f****ing twice all while knowing he is a felon, a traitor inciting acts of treason.
And then when he is re-elected and it is pretty certain that not only was there huge interference from Russia, but the election was also rigged in Trumps favour – and to make all of that worse it’s known he is colluding with Russia and it’s well known now that his plan is to destroy the country and harm millions of people. And still nobody in America does anything. The inaction of your President, the Vice President, the Pentagon, and many others at the top of the food chain are fully accountable for this. They swore an oath to protect Americans and instead they are letting it continue as it becomes increasingly clear that he is the next Hitler.
Britain, a very small country already had to fight not one but two world wars against Hitler.,,including at times by themselves as home guards. We do not have anywhere near the money, the military, the resources that America does. It’s actually pathetic that one of the biggest countries in the world would expect one of the smallest to bail them out when they could sort this out themselves and are choosing not to.
Trump in power with America doing f**k all to stop him entering the White House are already putting Britain and many other countries in significant risk of another world war…and worse still when Trump exits NATO which he will the British and the other NATO will frankly have to focus on their own defences and find ways to fill the gap of America abandoning them.
Not only all of that but what you are talking about was what 400 years ago!?!?!? Give me a break. The British of the day are not accountable to what our extremely distant ancestors did.
I confess to a malicious hope that Trump would win.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” — H. L. Mencken.
And “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake” a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.
The interesting thing is that many elections become a near 50/50 split. Obviously when run by publicity merchants and worse the merchandise will be packaged to appeal to the most and the worst. A weakness of FPTP systems.
But ‘buy on the rumour, sell on the news’. I am pretty sure Trump will run into the weeds in 6 months and flail around until the following election. That nice Mr Musk may regret hitching his wagon to a bunch of mountebanks and charlatans who seem to have got their training in the dodgier law schools and accounting firms.
Keep a close eye on the family silver. O what japes we shall have.