Politically, we are in a perplexing Alice in Wonderland moment of logical absurdities, surreal paradoxes and nonsensical, expectation-defying whimsy. I’ll end with some tentative positives but the ‘comic’ political parallels with Wonderland drawn here are dark rather than cute.
Meet ‘our leader’.
The paradox of the ‘Astonishing Mr Trump’ is that the world’s most powerful leader, who oversees global geopolitical stability, democracy and the planet’s future, is a deeply discombobulating parody of stewardship.
We witness a man with the attention span, unmoored, wittering garrulity, self-absorption and petulance of a three-year old. With the Queen of Hearts’ chaotic irrationality, he spins endless falsities and is capable, like her, of “believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast”, including that he’s ended six wars and that egg prices have fallen 400%.
Trump also shares the Queen’s arbitrary vindictive power. Both are devotees of flawed justice and sham trials. His response to political inconvenience such as the two foolish Knaves who produced unflattering employment and Iran bombing data, sick and injured Gazan children needing US help, postal votes, or outspoken ex-employees (like John Bolton) is to ban, raid or fire them – effectively the Queen’s hysterical decree “off with their heads”.
Beyond these fantastical faults, Trump’s absolute power has uncoupled his narcissism from any moderation by the world outside his head. Unconstrained, this solipsism has consumed him, leaving a husk, wrapped only in a plastic celebrity veneer. Trump has become Roald Dahl’s Mike Teevee, swallowed and transformed by the screen on which he fixates. He is a living embodiment, a fleshy incarnation, of the shallow pizzazz of showbiz consumerism, a hollow ‘made for tv’ droid, more meme than man, mono-powered by attention.
The outrage machine
Trump’s grotesque persona represents the pinnacle of Neil Postman’s vision of politics as a “soma” medication feeding our hunger for amusement. Governance is no longer about ideas and solutions, but about cutting through in the fragmented, irrelevant, superficial medium of the screen.
We are in the grubby theatre of James Bloodworth’s ‘entertainer politician’, peopled with “rude personalities” who combine charismatic comms with formulaic platitudes.
It’s a place where political wannabies shout through the noisy razzmatazz with desperate stunts like bungee jumping and accosting train fare dodgers. And where the right-wing are driven to paroxysms of deep ideological fury by absurdities like the ‘woke left’s’ alleged desire to cancel Mr Potato Head and Dr Seuss.
This ‘Tiktok’ rabbit hole is a perfect playground for populists to algorithmically pump out polarised anger and simplified answers from their outrage machines. Nigel Farage and co, enthralled by Trump’s audacity, currently have this device on a dangerously high setting, amplifying anti-migrant hostility and fuelling febrile herd anger that’s spilling onto the streets around migrant hotels.
It’s wild.
‘Curiouser and curiouser’
Watching these blatant attacks on our basic values and democracy, we are aghast but unsure how to stop them.
Equally unsettling is that, when we look to our leaders for vision and guidance, we find them caught in the far-right’s headlights like paralysed rabbits. Aside from a few brave voices, the Democrats are still hiding behind the Caterpillar’s magic mushroom, rudderless, quiescent and bickering.
Here matters are equally confusing. Labour, the party supposedly defending our democracy against the Trumpesque advance of regressive Reform ideology, is instead, with the Mad Hatter’s botched logic, copying the very thing it’s meant to be resisting by overreaching on policy from proscription to protest rights.
Labour’s ‘actions’ against the Gaza genocide (reducing military aid, conditional recognition of Palestine) have the same farcical insufficiency as the Queen’s insistence that, in Wonderland, one “runs simply to stay in the same place”.
The party’s ‘busyness that goes nowhere’ is, it seems, a facade concealing a web of collusion, with pro-Israel lobbyists like Labour Friends of Israel giving substantial donations to nearly half of the Labour cabinet, regular private meetings, and the MoD poised to agree a £2bn training deal with Israels’ largest arms firm, Elbit.
Like Alice’s excuse to the Caterpillar, Labour “can’t explain itself because it’s not itself”, at least, not the version with any conscience.
“Won’t you join the dance?”
In this rotten burlesque we also find US and UK press being dragged around the Trumpchild’s absurdist news cycle by the hair.
For a random moment, Trump started making favorable noises about Ukraine and being performatively cross with Putin. It was transient and meaningless but the press earnestly chewed it over, lending it unwarranted credibility.
Ditto Trump’s talk of ‘ceasefires’, a notion with the existential certainty of the Cheshire Cat’s grin. The press followed Trump’s ‘ceasefire’ chatter like the Queen’s gardeners obediently painting her roses, only for Trump to drop the idea in Alaska and in his subsequent meeting with European leaders.
At this truly Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, the dignitaries sat round Trump’s White House table waiting with dead-eyed embarrassment for his gibberish to cease whilst desperately parsing it for any fleeting hint of Ukraine support.
What is the press doing? Are they just obsequious White Rabbits seeking to avoid upsetting the all-powerful one? Or is it all about retaining access? Since challenges to Trump are generally muzzled, the point of retaining this perk isn’t clear. Even the purpose of grovelling flattery, as Anne Applebaum observes, is lost with this capricious felon.
Perhaps commentators hold the quasi-religious belief that our ‘protectors’ must ultimately be benevolent. The realisation that the UKs ‘special friend’ is on the ‘Caligula spectrum’ feels intolerable.
So, instead they create tortuous narratives that ascribe him benign intentions: ‘he wants peace (really) even if framed around the massive conceit of wanting a ‘Peace Prize’; ‘he’s just a populist (really) and can be won over if, like Keir Starmer, you pitch it right. Simply use his fondness for deal-making as a basis for policy agreements’.
Whilst the press runs their soothing narratives, dictatorships are fomenting around the world. One fear is that, once installed, they could acquire the same sticky longevity as Russia and North Korea’s long-term dictatorships. The misogynist, anti-diversity, Catholic-convert, ethno-nationalist, Great Replacement advocate, JD Vance lacks Trump’s ‘charisma’. But the installation of US authoritarian structures (massively increased military presence in major US cities, suppression of ‘woke’ content in news media, schools, museums and higher education) will substitute for Vance’s inadequacies.
Yet there are glimmers of light down the rabbit hole.
Alice’s phone
The internet is a curse but also a blessing. ‘Citizen phone journalism’ keeps us anchored to truths that escape the clutches of the outrage machine. Phones are powerful weapons for those still free to use them in US and European democracies tipping into authoritarianism; this freedom distinguishes these nations from authoritarian systems such as Russia and China.
The problem for authoritarians is that the online world also channels meaningful anger. In fully-fledged totalitarian states, online content is tightly controlled. But elsewhere there is constant glorious leakage.
Ordinary people are stepping outside of the far-right’s concocted outrage narratives to show real events. It’s us, with our mobiles, who have summoned global rage about Gaza, interviewed the elderly being arrested, filmed ICE purges on street corners and the huge anti-Trump protests. It’s us who have sent acts of defiance via discussion, satire, and powerful billboard displays spinning round the world as viral messages.
And these tales of truth have their own potency that competes with the outrage machine. They create connection, solidarity and citizen action. Gaza fury has country-hopped, spreading globally with magnificent speed.
These points of contact also challenge nativism and isolationism. When we connect, even online, with a West Bank Palestinian refugee, a de-radicalised US Southern Baptist, a trans Israeli, or a Somalian justice project leader, we strengthen mutual understanding, compassion and resolve.
Bottling genies
There is also a difference between preventing a movement from starting, and removing it, once installed. Women’s rights in Afghanistan have been suppressed again by the Taliban. But this reversal is inconceivable in modernised, secular Western countries that have respected and benefited from equal rights since the early 1900s.
Alarmingly, women are currently under attack with all the grim surreality of Wonderland. Pete Hegseth and Mark Robinson are busy sharing posts challenging women’s right to vote. But these and other women’s rights will now never be silenced. Such regressive moves won’t be tolerated by half the population and will backfire, hopefully catastrophically, before they succeed. This renewed fight must, however, take other vulnerable groups (ethnic, trans and disabled, etc) with it.
‘You’ve been had’: the Midas Machine
As the alluring curse of Reform demonstrates, socio-economic deprivation increases the attractiveness of populist authoritarianism.
But our economic predicament could provoke a different reaction. Poor living standards and inequalities are linked to the Midas Machine: the incentive of self-serving governments and corporate lobbying interests to persuade us that unfettered markets are the ‘best and most efficient form of distribution’ and will ‘naturally’ result in wealth being fairly spread across social groups.
But awareness is growing that this neo-liberal economic principle is a lie, that ‘we’ve been had’.
This suspicion isn’t new but is becoming turbo charged. Economic research and campaign groups now co-ordinate closely and are able to share knowledge rapidly. Details of the pernicious web of lobbying interests guiding government decisions are now regularly publicised. They just need to reach many more people.
Similarly, concern about inequality is becoming the main explanatory tool across social science disciplines and a unifying basis for action by certain politicians and campaign groups. We also now have working economic models, like the Nordic mixed models and social welfare programmes from which we could, and should, be learning.
It all becomes a question of will but jointly signals a possible turning point.
‘The End?’
Trump’s US is not ‘some other place’. His contempt for the global rules-based order and his normalisation of cruelty, hatred and the othering of vulnerable groups, have deeply impressed proto-fascists everywhere and been energetically adopted in the UK. The possibility of future free and fair US elections now looks remote.
Our new political Wonderland feels both absurd and menacing, and the masquerades being performed by our supine press and politicians in this wonky, fractured place do not protect our interests. But Alice represents us. “Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, turning purple. “I won’t!” said Alice. Instead, she looked the Queen straight in the eye and refused to be quiet.
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