Trump
is a problem but he’s not the problem.
A
vacuous psychopath, Trump had to win the game, but he’s just another contestant in an evolving
show. To focus on Trump is to miss the point entirely.
Politics
is not about Left or Right any more. This is a revolution from all sides of
what used to be the political spectrum, from Trump to Podemos; Corbyn to Le
Pen; alt-Right to Syriza; Bernie Sanders to Alternative für Deutschland.
The
only thing that these disparate types have in common is that they all want to
erase what was.
Trump’s
victory was another manifestation of the frustration of people who live in a
system that no longer works for them. Successive electorates have spurned
traditional voting patterns, because they see that Western Democracy has been
dying for decades.
The
Irish know first hand, having voted against two EU treaties only to have their
rejections ignored. Hillary won a million more votes than Trump and lost, so
half of America feels unheard. Half of the UK population want to stay in the
EU, the young and urban at odds with the older and rural.
Wherever
you look there are too many people feeling ignored.
Time
was when governments governed and leaders lead. However, over the last 30 years
there have been extraordinary changes in the way the world works, which
combined to negate the effectiveness of our old political system.
Once
governments were active, imposing ideologies upon their people. For some time
now they have been able only to react to global economic conditions; the
fluctuations of currencies; the mood of the markets.
Through
systemic tax avoidance, trade deals like TTIP and trading blocks like the EU,
corporations are now powerful enough to dictate to governments; to intervene in
the running of previously sovereign nations.
Now
businesses are able to sue governments for loss of profits they might have
earned in the future; workers’ rights, guaranteed hours and job security have
eroded into dust; overseas entities are able to operate inside other nations’
health and eduction sectors and universally, voters are outraged that their
politicians serially fail them.
As is
their wont in matters of democracy, the Greeks led the way by electing Syriza,
followed by the UK with Brexit.
Then
America, as ever contributing on the grandest of scales, illustrated that
politics as we knew it is dead, by choosing a businessman to lead them into
this new corporate order.
Admittedly,
politicians were never a perfect bunch, but as the entire political and financial
world continues to metamorphose, our decrepit democratic systems have become
sadly unable to satisfy us ever again.
Whoever
might lead your country, no government will be able to improve the lot of its
people unless their needs happen to mirror the needs of the abstract notion of
global economy.
Why
else would we suffer the obscenity of an Irish government appealing against a
ruling requiring a corporation to pay taxes equivalent to this country’s annual
health budget?
Stop
crying foul and start asking the right questions.
Here’s
one: if Donald Trump had walked up to you five years ago and told you that he’d
be president of the USA one day, would you have believed him? Did you believe
that he was really going to build a wall equivalent to the distance from Rome
to Moscow? Did you really believe he really believed anything he said during
that vile campaign?
Yet
still yourselves and the media ask the old questions, as if he meant what he
said.
Everyone focuses on Trump, rather than those who voted for him, yet if
he'd needed to be further to the left than Bernie Sanders to win the election,
he would’ve made Lenin look like Dubya.
Vacant
and vain, obsessed only with winning, Trump is the natural leader of the way
the world now works. Avoiding the dangers of having to face journalists in
traditional media, he addresses the nation via You Tube and Twitter.
Telling
analysis came from Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of Trump’s book, ‘The Art Of
The Deal.’ Having worked one to one with Trump for years, he described the
President-Elect as having the "intelligence and attention span of a 9-year old with ADHD.”
An
empty vessel, utterly out of his depth, Trump doesn’t worry me. The people
around him, who do know what they’re doing, scare the hell out of me.
In
Mike Pence we have a Creationist a mere choked pretzel away from the
presidency. The US National Security Advisor is the person who collates information from all the military and security agencies and combines it to advise the president on what to do.
Shame then that it's Micael Flynn, who was sacked by Obama for incometpency, after leaking confidential information and coming out with what became known as 'Flynn Facts', such as that fear of Muslims is rational. He also tweeted 'Not any more, Jews!' which is more than a little disturbing.
Chief strategist Bannon is on board to keep the hate alive, as
Trump concedes each of his more aggressive and ridiculous election pledges, one
by one.
While
he needs to be seen working with Tea Party types, Trump realises that to win
this new reality show, his pragmatism has to kick in fast and bigly.
Tragically,
Trump’s presidency will see a rabid and regressive hijacking of the Supreme
Court, with women's rights, workers’ rights, gun control and even the
separation of church and state all suddenly vulnerable.
Western
democracy now leaves millions of voters on all sides of the political arena
frustrated and furious.
We
must stop trying to find a solution within the old system and accept that we have
created a society driven not by the needs of the many, but the needs of
conglomerates.
Then
we might start the process of devising a representative political system for
that world; our new world.
©Charlie
Adley
27.11.2016.
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