It’s about now that you feel the ice-cold fingers around your heart. They’ve been there a while, slowly inching closer, causing this constant low-level chill in your chest. But now they’ve made contact. They’re grasping for the aorta and the ventricles, they’re starting to squeeze. The fear is here. The dread.
– Ian Dunt
Biff J Trump
Do you wake up with nightmares of the dystopian world portrayed in Back to the Future II? Remember the repulsive Biff Tannen, an arrogant, selfish, narcissistic bully, who has created fear, pain and disorder all around him. Even in the 1980s, Biff was modelled – according to his creator – on Donald Trump, then a relatively young man whom it was possible to ignore. It is astounding how much life has imitated fiction. Knowing what we know now, Biff was a flattering portrayal. The reality goes way beyond what could have been predicted. Hold that thought.
It is difficult to forget even briefly that the American election is going to happen on 5 November, just a few days away, and indeed over 60 million people have already voted. The outcome is, to say the least, uncertain. It is almost a truism to say that there has never been such a momentous election, one which risks marking the end of American democracy as we know it, but with knock on effects throughout the world. Potentially a day which will live in infamy, as Franklin D Roosevelt would’ve put it.
We are all stakeholders in this election, so it is ironic and bizarre that the outcome is in the hands, not just of Americans, but of voters in the seven swing states which remain finely balanced. That this should be so is the result of the arcane and wholly unjustifiable electoral college system, something which in turn came about at the founding of the state and largely as a result of slave ownership. So it is an extreme anachronism.
Whyever Trump?
How has it come to this? How is Trump even a candidate?
In any sane world it would never have happened. It should’ve been obvious to all even in 2016 that Trump stood out as the worst ever prepared candidate for the presidency. Despite the public image he carefully cultivated through The Apprentice, his whole career was littered with publicly available and solid evidence of dishonesty, selfishness, narcissism and incompetence. The scandal of Trump University was only a small but telling example.
Based on his record he would not have passed the ‘Fit and Proper Person’ test, nor would he have made the shortlist for a job in health, education or the civil service. Some voters consoled themselves with the thought that there were checks and balances in place. There aren’t because the constitution assumes that the people know best. Others lived in hope that his bark was worse than his bite, that he would change colours on being elected and become an enlightened president, or that those around him could restrain him. We know of course that nothing could be further from the truth. There are far too many examples of misrule on a monumental scale to list.
What have we learned?
But now, eight years on, we know so much more than we did in 2016. We have been learning every day both while he has been in and out of office. His actions and his promises should say it all.
The appalling events of 6 January 2021, for which he still faces the possibility of prosecution, and his second impeachment, all occurred after the American public unequivocally rejected him. His blatant refusal to accept that result, not to mention his willingness to countenance homicide in his name, should alone disqualify him from standing, let alone being elected.
Recently he has been sounding more and more like a dictator. He tells the electorate they’ll never need to bother voting again after this election. He will, he tells us, take control of the Department of Justice, and he will use the FBI and National Guard as his tools. He will imprison his opponents and release the 6 January insurgents, implicitly giving immunity to people who actively tried to overturn democracy and carte blanche to those who do the same in the future. He wants to shut down purveyors of ‘fake news’ like ABC and CBS. He talks about deporting the 11 million (he says 20 million) ‘illegal immigrants’ – or, if he cannot do that, putting them in internment camps (concentration camps?). Remember many of these people are essential to the US economy – even to Trump’s own companies. Many have children who are American citizens. And ironically, what they are accused of doing is precisely the same as Elon Musk did when he first came to the US.
Trump plans to use his ill-gotten majority on the Supreme Court to make any challenge more difficult. And, knowing that there are few if any Republican members of Congress who are prepared to stand up to him, the possibility of retaking the Senate and holding the House of Representatives, which could easily happen, would be the icing on the cake for him. Unlike in 2016 there is a plan in place to create an authoritarian state. Project 2025, even if Trump implausibly disavows knowledge of it, is ready to run. Nafeez Ahmed paints a picture that goes beyond dystopia – think Armageddon:
“The Trump campaign has now made exceedingly clear what it plans to do if it wins. It amounts to a project of national suicide … The plan itself is not viable. But if executed, it would pave the way for a future of total economic catastrophe, environmental disaster, permanent civil unrest, ethnic cleansing and genocidal violence – not to mention, a global economic crisis which empowers Vladimir Putin … The Musk-Trump plan is the fruition of a global network war aimed at tearing down the entire infrastructure of a viable democracy in the United States. We should stop underestimating the risks, and start waking up to who is fighting this war and why.”
Do I need to mention his countless indictments and his 34 felony convictions, for which he could well go to jail if he loses? (What a reason to want to be president). Or the unprecedented assault his party is launching on women’s reproductive rights? The debate on reproductive freedom is Harris’s strongest suit, but in a closely-fought election it is going to have to do some heavy lifting.
Allies who have seen the light
Of the 40+ people who worked in his cabinet only four are prepared to endorse him, the rest agree that he was not and is not fit to be president, as, for very good reasons, does his own former vice president, Mike Pence. John Kelly, a respected general and Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, hand-picked by Trump himself, spoke of his fascist tendencies, his admiration for the Third Reich, and his wish that his generals would be as compliant as Hitler’s. A group of 13 former senior Trump staff members signed a letter expressing support for Kelly and dread at the prospect of a further Trump presidency. And these are loyal Republicans. It is impossible to see this as just sour grapes:
“Donald Trump’s disdain for the American military and admiration for dictators like Hitler is rooted in his desire for absolute, unchecked power… In a second term, those who once tried to prevent Donald Trump from his worst impulses will no longer be there to rein him in. For the good of our country, our democracy, and our Constitution, we are asking you to listen closely and carefully to General Kelly’s warning. We unfortunately know all too well how serious and dire it is”.
But just to prove them right, Trump’s recent rallies have been more and more shrill, most famously that in Madison Square Garden, where he was supported by billionaire Elon Musk and right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s notorious ‘joke’ about Puerto Rico was just a small part of a display of venom, hatred and bile which would almost certainly have fallen foul of the law had it happened in the UK. As Emily Maitlis put it: ‘they came for the misogyny and stayed for the racism’. And now he is openly encouraging his supporters to take a gun to Liz Cheney. That particular outrage is the subject of investigation by the Arizona attorney-general. This is the same Trump who became apoplectic about Biden’s “garbage” gaffe.
Our problem too
But this is not just a US problem. For the world it is impossible to see any good in a Trump win. He has stated his intentions. If he is elected he will ‘solve the Ukraine problem in a day’, i.e., let Putin have his way. He will abandon, or at least mortally wound, NATO, leaving Europe, East and West, at the mercy of a revanchist Russia. He will once again walk away from net zero, and no doubt other nations will follow his lead, feeling there is really no point in even trying to delay the catastrophic climate change of which we are daily seeing evidence all around us.
Back to Biff
As for Biff, in the film he was made to disappear through the magic of time travel. If only in that one respect life could imitate art …
And back to my original title, I will complete the quotation: “Remember, remember! The fifth of November, the Gunpowder treason and plot”. A prediction? I hope not.
Continued in part 2. Read it here
This article is adapted from one on the website of Oxford for Europe, of which the author is currently chair, www.oxfordforeurope.org..
We want to hear your views. Please send any comments to editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk
CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO OUR CROWDFUNDER
HELP US BECOME STRONGER SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO DELIVER POWERFUL CITIZEN JOURNALISM!
