It is easy to look two years forward to the 2026 midterms, and reason that all will be corrected as the GOP loses waves of House and Senate seats, thus bringing into play those checks and balances for which the Constitution is rightly famous. But Trump has also told his fans that they will not have to vote ever again. He showed you who he was; believe him the first time.
For those in the USA who will suffer the bigotry, the misogyny, the uncaring authoritarianism, some did warn us, like Mehdi Hasan: “People - including top US journalists, perhaps especially top US journalists - don’t quite get how bad it’s going to be. How beyond term one it’ll be. How bad the Musks and RFKs will be. I don’t think even I fully accept how bad it’s going to be and I have been shouting how bad it’s going to be for years”.
Here on the other side of the North Atlantic, though, the problems will be very simply trade and defence. Trump is threatening swingeing tariffs on anything coming into the USA. Maybe NAFTA will not survive. So countries in Europe, inside the EU or not, will have to learn to do without that market.
That is, of course, easier said than done. But it must be done. It will not be easy to do, especially as, more or less at the same time, European countries that had seen the USA as The Great Protector, the one country that underpinned the NATO alliance, will have to learn to look after themselves, singly or, more likely, collectively. Which probably means via the EU.
So where does that leave the UK, with its Government, headed by someone formerly so enthusiastically pro-EU, but now implacably opposed to closer ties with the European Club? Keir Starmer has to realise two things here: One, there is no point cosying up to Trump, who couldn’t give a crap about him. And two, he can’t ride the European Club horse and the Special Relationship horse at the same time. He has to choose one, and only one.
He must also learn to shut out the howling of our free and fearless press at even the mention of closer ties with the EU. Because he has little choice, when faced with an isolationist USA, but to mend fences with the EU, and forget his repeated refusal to countenance rejoining the bloc. In this, Trump and his gang have unintentionally done the UK a great service.
In the meantime, he will fulfil his promise for the USA to engage in no more wars, and instead keep those wars within his own country - a war on women’s rights, a war against ethnic minorities, a war against anyone opposed to his power grab, and a war against the freedom of speech he falsely promotes.
And those countries that have embraced neoliberalism can, in the meantime, reflect on its failure to deliver Trump’s opponents the White House. We might usefully consider re-reading The General Theory Of Employment Interest And Money, whose embrace saved the West from revolution after World War 2, while The New Great Dictator gets on with laying waste to the USA.
Europe needs to look after itself. And the UK has to choose - wisely.
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
11 comments:
This is, cynically, why I didn't care if Trump was elected. That sentence, 'trump lays waste of America'. Good. For all the reasons stated, this is not a crisis, it IS an opportunity. Trump himself won't be running the USA. His cognitive powers are visibly in decline, his campaign was a shambles. That any American could vote for him shows how partisan the USA has become, and how much power the religious right now wields.
We can expect much misery to be wrought on women, immigrants, ethnic minorities, te poorest off, and the next on the religious rights hit list, the LGBT community.
But while Trump is devastating the USA, while his diminished powers allows the likes of Musk to direct policy, it will divide the USA, and a divided, inward looking USA means freedom of action for the rest of us.
Let's hope, instead of as we expect, Europes leaders leading the march to toady at Trumps feet, a quiet revolution does take place. Instead of looking right, look at ourselves and choose our own way. Let's remember why De Gaulle wanted the EU in the first place - because he saw the USA as a threat. He was right.
What is the likely reaction to THIS:
https://youtu.be/_heq6CkeMH8?feature=shared
I like the idea of an isolationist USA. They can start by vacating all the air bases in the UK and we can put homes for our citizens on them.
Where's the beef?
One far right genocidal racist warmongering thieving capitalist regime is much like another, geography notwithstanding. Trump, Harris, Macron, Scholz, Meloni, von der Leyen, Starmer, Johnson, Badenoch, Blair, Brown and all the others are a logical development in a corrupt socioeconomic and political system. The next major step will probably be yet another "Pearl Harbor moment" to "unify" the West.
For all its pretensions, the USA is actually merely the last European colony. One quarter of it is stolen from Mexico, a second quarter "bought" from Napoleon, and the remaining half stolen from mass murdered indigenous people. It was built on the back of racist slavery. Gore Vidal therefore rightly said, "We lacked moral authority from the start."
Trump is the latest symptom of institutional moral decay, nothing more. There are others waiting in the wings.
Hello again.
Well that *was* a nice holiday.
Anything much happen while I was away?
Vidal also said the Hispanic people ejected from the south west USA are now sensibly filling it up again.
Seems fair enough.
My fears of this result and second term are that it will give the far right and liberetarian movements further prominence in the USA and over here. "Tommy Robinson", Lawrence Fox, Andrew Tate, Nigel Farage and their mates at Spiked Online, GB News and Talk TV (Alex Phillips and Heartless Bozo in particular) will all use this as evidence that the 'woke' are losing and hatred of Muslims and immigration in general have been validated. It will further actively push the delusion they represent the majority of our population.
The Americans though...it was a choice of two repuslive individuals and they chose the worst. Regardless of the result, Palastinians will die, and Israel with its endless funding shall destroy Gaza.
America might become isolated but so will the UK, despite millions of people making it clear they are against the Zionist Israeli establishment and its genocide of innocent Palastinians.
On the one hand, whilst we will see the increase in the far right (although of course, the GB news and Talk TV mob will always take offence at this description, whilst dog-whistling muslims are taking over Britain) there is still hope. The ensuring carnage will lead to pushback and the essential truth: socialism or Barbarism.
With the increase of social media, more people, especially the young are becoming increasingly aware of the western world's issues and that for humanity and civilisation to florish, we must learn.
In the meantime everybody - don't let the b@stards grind you down.
Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump in 2016, and indeed 2020, but of course the establishment ensured that Wall Street and AIPAC got their obedient puppets.
Womrns rights in America were destroyed by Hillary Clinton's ego.
As Sanders stated the Democrats have abandoned the working class, and as Jonathan Pie pointed out, the Dem leadership seems obssessed with pandering to wealthy latte-sipping cosmopolitan women, treating working class voters with open contempt.
In 2022, Sanna Marin urged Europe to be self-sufficient in technology, weapons, food, energy, medicine, etc, warning that Europe's dependency on the US.
Europe is too entangled by its ties to the USA. In a multi-polar world the US is a rival, and should be treated as such.
What is needed is pan-European nationalism, and an end to NATO and being America's vassals.
I would rather a European Defence Force, a partnership of equals rather than a super-power and it's vassals.
Yes, but Jeremy Corbyn is a member of Hamas, Hezbollah and the IRA because "politics is a rough game".
So everything will be OK with our very own brand of lying hypocrite and accessory to genocide in Downing Street. What's sauce for the Yank goose is sauce for the British chihuahua.
Heather Cox Richardson writes:
“ Notably, Trump has said he will appoint Musk to head a new government efficiency commission, and Musk has vowed to cut “at least $2 trillion” from the federal budget. Such cuts would decimate government services, including food programs and Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Supplemental nutrition programs disproportionately benefit rural areas, and Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are used much more heavily in counties that support Trump than those that don’t.”
Complaints about face-eating leopards are sure to follow.
Post a Comment