Youtube screenshot.
I try to avoid watching the Republican and Democratic conventions, not because I don’t care about US electoral politics but because the coverage tends to be worse than the spectacle itself. In the case of the Republican party and Donald Trump, the whole cursed thing is not only fiction, it’s cheesily produced fiction. Cheesy and treated as if it is anything more than bullshit sound and bullshit fury. Apparently, a fair number of US residents want nothing more (or less as the case may be). This truth is what made so many of us wonder whether or not Trump’s so-called brush with death the Saturday before the convention wasn’t also staged.
I’m not going to speculate on the shooting in Pennsylvania. As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t matter what the alleged shooter’s motives were, nor does it matter whether or not Trump was seriously wounded. The Trumpists got what they wanted—another excuse to raise their con man hero on the pedestal they’ve erected for him. It’s a pedestal built from lies, millions and millions of ill-begotten dollars, right wing preachers and bishops calling themselves Christians and speaking in the tongues of Satan, and a fossil fuel industry intent on destroying the earth before their grandbabies are old enough to buy a legal drink. The only thing more grandiose than that pedestal is Donald Trump’s impression of himself. Like the worshippers of the golden calf erected under Aaron’s command in the Bible’s Book of Exodus, these Christians and their camp followers revel in their corruption. If you know the story, the Israelites’ god wanted to kill them all after the episode with the calf, but Moses talked god out of it. Then he brought the ten commandments to his people. If you believe in the story, you could argue it’s been downhill from there.
The upcoming Democratic shindig has the potential to be a bit more interesting, especially now that Biden stepped down. The already written script goes out the window. A new personality will be given the job of campaigning against Donald Trump who, despite his overblown confidence and the sycophantic hemming and hawing of most mainstream mediots in the US news business, does not have the White House wrapped up. The fascist tendencies put into play during his presidency and his two previous campaigns are now front and center. Indeed, they form the basis for his entire campaign. Given the Supreme Court’s recent decision regarding presidential immunity—a decision which essentially gives the president immunity from prosecution for acts performed as president—a Trumpist future is a fascist future.
It’s not like the United States is the only nation in the global north where the rulers are having a difficult time with the idea of democracy. The French pretender Macron and his party came in third in the parliamentary elections there. The fascist/ultraright coalition came in second and the leftist coalition garnered the most votes. The reaction from Macron was swift. He refused to let them take power and quickly began cobbling together a coalition made up of his neoliberal party and non-fascist conservatives. The lesson to be drawn from this is easy. Liberals would rather align themselves with the right than allow the Left to take power. This is an old lesson that has proven true at least since Hindenberg made Hitler the Chancellor because both were afraid of the German Left.
There are those who continue to insist that Trump is a Russian asset. They point to his friendly overtures to Putin and his desire to end the war between Russia and Ukraine as proof of this. While it does seem that Trump prefers a good relationship with Russia more than the Democrats, the idea that he is somehow a tool of Moscow is impossible for me to accept. The United States has historically tried to play Beijing and Moscow against each other. The best example of this occurred while Nixon was president and he opened up relations with China, followed by a policy of detente with the USSR. Trump isn’t a Russian asset just because the policies he suggests occasionally align with those of Moscow. No. He’s just a product of the US in the last half of the twentieth century. Greed, triumphalism, racist and a worshiper of mammon; these are what defines Donald Trump and they are what defines the United States in 2024.
A quick summary, then. French ruler Macron rejects and attempts to subvert the results of the French election. Trump avoids prosecution in most of his trials after his court gives him immunity for his crimes. Then a wound smaller than one received when a kid falls off a bike appears on his head when another misled and misplaced young white male shooter fires a rifle at a rally and kills a Trump supporter. The Labour party wins elections in Britain, but the policies of that warfare state continue, doing its part in the genocide of Palestinians. The nuclear clock ticks closer to midnight because of Washington and Russia’s refusal to end the stalemated war in Ukraine. Moronic millenialists wearing bandages on their ears in support of their false prophet think turning back the hands of time to a fairy tale moment when rich white men did good things is somehow the way to deal with an uncertain future. The fraud J. D. Vance accepts his role as Horatio to Trump’s Hamlet. Or maybe Vance is Curly to Trump’s Moe (as in the Three Stooges, nyuk nyuk.) Meanwhile, the other guy isn’t the other guy anymore.
The sideshow is now definitely a shitshow. Hang in there.
