No.159 - ‘July 4th’ and ‘Super-Saturday’. Or the ‘Beginning of the End of `Populism’?
Dear James,
It hasn’t been a good week for Boris or Trump. Both continued to spin their falsities and both failed dramatically. Today is ‘July 4th’ in the USA and ‘Super Saturday’ in the UK, the day when we ‘return to normal’. Hang on to your hats. Prepare yourself for the next gurgitation of populist dramatics!
Most facts can be spun, fudged, disguised or minimized by false perspectives. Yesterday at Mt Rushmore, Donald Trump did his best to falsify the ‘American Dream’ by stoking racial division in a flagrant attempt to deflect from his own shocking mishandling of the coronavirus plague. However, in messy, ‘real’ democracies like America, some facts cannot be subject to such manipulation. One, is the fact of death. Death affects us all existentially but also presents another problem. In real democracies it is counted religiously. On Thursday there were 52,788 new reported infections in the USA. 45 states have seven-day averages of new infections higher than the previous week. June saw more than 800,000 new cases, bringing the total number of cases in the United States to more than 2.6 million. Following the success of Mayor Cuomo in New York in suppressing the virus there, the largely Republican states of the USA are now in the grip of a major upsurge in the covid-19 pandemic and much of it can be laid directly at the door of Donald Trump. He has tried to ignore the facts of death. He has mocked the science, sneered at the experts, refused to commit federal funds and used the non-wearing of masks as a symbol of defiance. Here is macho man taking on nature itself. And, surprise, surprise, nature is winning!
Rushmore was an attempt to counter that realisation. Last week Trump had returned exultantly to the campaign trail with a rally in Tulsa. He predicted a turn out of over a million. An extra stage was erected outside the main arena for the extra fans. But in the end only 19,000 turned up and many seats were empty. The great man’s rhetoric had crashed headlong into the facts of coronavirus and the opinion polls. That night Trump returned to Washington looking bedraggled and defeated. The polls say that Biden is up between 8 or 9 points on Trump. Blue leaning areas that went to Trump in 2016 are returning to Biden in droves. Overall Biden is above 50% in many polls. Much can change between July and November, but no wonder the world’s arch-narcissist looked as if he had just been drowned in a tsunami of facts.
This week Boris held his own version of Tulsa – in Dudley, West Midlands. Looking pale and washed out, he bumbled out in front of his meagre audience of young, mute, two-meter-distanced apprentices, to announce to their bemused gaze, his latest wheeze. “Build, Build, Build!” Boris is a child as much as Trump is a child. They both aspire to be major historical figures – in Boris’s case Churchill (and, since Dudley, FDR to whom he compared himself!) and in Trump’s case some idealised ‘rugged individual’ such as the ‘cowboy’. Both aspirations are fictions of adolescent imaginations. Boris’s £5bn represents 0.2% of GDP compared with FDR’s ‘New Deal’ which raised government spending by 40% compared with 1929’s GDP. Like thirsting survivors in an endless desert of bad news, Boris and Trump span up the mirages of good news. “We will not just bounce back, we will bounce forward.” puffed Boris. The economy is "roaring back" bleated Trump. Anyone heard of arrested development? Tulsa and Dudley were major flops. The rhetoric was exhausted, limp, drained, vacuous. Both politicians are running on empty.
Yesterday at Mt. Rushmore Donald Trump, railed against ‘the left wing-cultural revolution’! And, for once he was almost right! There has been, in the last seventy years, a left of centre cultural revolution reflecting the needs of the ordinary person rather than the rich. Yesterday’s rant was a desperate attempt to convince the poor that, he, the ultimate oligarch, would protect their interests. Many are now waking up to his hypocrisy. Trump is on borrowed time.
Just over 250 years ago a small group of the best brains in America declared that “All men are created equal’ and are to be judged by the same laws. More recently in the UK, the best brains in our NHS have protected us from a total calamity. In the NHS there is not one law for the rich and another for the poor. Not one law for the Epsteins, Ghislaine Maxwells and Trumps of this world and another for the rest of us. Not one law for the whites and another for the blacks. The same laws are for everyone. Including Prince Andrew! All that is now obvious. Trump and Boris are being found out.
Tulsa and Dudley may turn out to be turning points, James. The rhetoric of Trump and Boris is foundering on facts. The numbers of deaths continue to climb in the USA and our own ‘R rate’ is still 0.7-0.9. Britain is far from being free of Coronavirus and a No-deal Brexit looms with its own ‘super-facts’.
I have one message for you, James. When those chlorine washed chickens come home to roost, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes for anything!
Have a super Saturday!
Kind Regards,
BH - Your Concerned Constituent