To many all that’s left seems to be a right turn, especially in the good ole’ US of A. Concerned? Yes, we should be, even those who do not live there

The original title of this post is/was ‘To many all that’s left seems to be a right turn’ and it was written, unusually, in fact uniquely, before I wrote the body of the post itself. But I had to come up with something to help me focus on what I want to write. I might re-write it or I might stick with it. I don’t yet know, and what I have decided will certainly be obvious to you reading this.

But so far (14.35 GMT on January 5, 2022, several thousand feet up in the air — I’m on my way to Germany for about three or four weeks) though not having access to the internet sitting in a plane it cannot be posted for a while yet) that is the title. I’ll repeat, because such a wordy, possibly quite boring, intro needs some justification, the title is intended to help me keep my eye on the ball.

With that out of the way, let me add another pre-script (and does that word even exist? Well, it’s derived from postscript, so perhaps . . . and it does now, if only as an accidental neologism): I might now be 72 (and will turn 73 on November 21 next), but increasingly — not despite, but ironically because of my age — I dislike the attitude of rather too many over 60 that ‘it’s all going to the dogs, and I despair’.

I am a firm believer in plus ca change, plus la meme chose. It’s not ‘all’ going to the dogs. However, some of it might well be going rather badly wrong. And for a guy of my moral, political and social persuasions an apparent ‘drift to the right’ in many Western hemisphere nations is not encouraging.

Admittedly (and contentiously, of course — I’m not looking to upset people and when I do so, it is usually, although not always, unintentional) not all nations ‘in the Western hemisphere’ are of as much consequence as other.

But that is for another time, and I’m sure we, on both sides of the contention, can agree that the US of A most certainly is of ‘consequence’, not least because of the size of its economy and the role it has — so far — played in world affair. And that is one nation where a ‘drift to the right’ is rather serious for a liberal, possibly even ever-so-slightly-though-not-really-wanting-to-make-too-much-of-a-point-of-it-left-of-centre chap like me is worrying.

Since the horrors of WWII, of which I, born in 1949, have only heard, things seem in Western Europe have been on the up and up.

Go elsewhere in the world at any time in the past 74 years — at random and in no significant order — Chechnya, then Czechoslovakia (though admittedly part of the Western hemisphere but de facto not until the Soviet bloc collapsed in 1989), the various nations which make up the Congo, the Middle East, formerly Burma but now Myanmar, Sri Lanka and I don’t know where else — and it has really not been quite as bright, not by a long chalk.

I don’t have the figures to hand, but I suspect the world’s ‘non-democracies’ rather outweigh the world’s democracies. And even in some of those democracies, democracy itself is not in as healthy a state as it might be.

Here, in western Europe things look a lot rosier (notwithstanding that corruption still thrives in Spain, Italy, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and I don’t know where else). One problem is, though, that weWestern Hemispherians have tended, and still do tend, to see the world through our own prism.

Thus we are persuaded that the development of the world seems to us to have been one of increasing enlightenment. Really? Tell that to the Chinese — now far more prosperous but they are obliged to keep their noses clean — the Burmese, the Thais, Zimbabweans and rather to many else.

The world becoming more enlightened? If only. We might now have seen women slowly gaining more confidence after ‘Me too’, but female genital mutilation is still practised in far too many parts of the world. Enlightened? Up to a point, Lord Copper.

Perhaps the bizarre and wholly unprecedented attack — make that invasion — of the US Congress on January 6, 2021, might well get us to think again about just how established our various ‘democratic’ principles are.

For many years — ironically given its past history since the late 18th century and well-documented intrusions into the affairs of other nations — the US has billed itself as the promulgator of democracy in the world. Yet again, if only.

But before I carry on, I must make the point that I wholly dislike, despise and distrust a general anti-Americanism prevalent in far too many bien pensant folk (for that is how they like to see themselves) in the western world. It is a nonsense, but it is a persistent nonsense.

Whenever I hear loud claims made about the US and ‘Americans’ about how awful they are, I immediately respond ‘what all of them, all 380 million of them?’ But that never cuts any ice with — let me call a spade a bloody shovel — such stupid people. It might sound very arrogant, but as a rule, never try to debate or have a serious discussion with stupid people. I don’t, life is far too short.

We simply cannot and must not think and judge in broad-brush terms like that. Yet what we can do, what we must do, is call out the disturbing developments in the US over these past 20 years.

It is a fact that a substantial proportion of American citizens, and their number must be counted in several tens of millions, sincerely believe that ‘the election of Donald Trump to a second term in office as president of the US was stolen’. 

It does not concern them that many investigations into that claim, some by the Republican party itself, have not established any proof that was the case.

Yet each such conclusion is met with the cynical reaction that ‘they’ have cleverly covered their tracks’. Perhaps some reading this might even be inclined to believe that I, too, ‘have also been fooled’.

Well, believe what you want, but I prefer to listen to people who are not inclined to subscribe to conspiracy theories and who are more inclined to judge Donald J. Trump by his past behaviour and the judgment of those he appointed, then fired — John Bolton, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Rex Tillerson to name just a few — and who by no stretch of the imagination can be regarded as Establishment patties or Democrat stooges.

Yet those supporters — I repeat who can be numbered in the tens of millions — who are Trump’s incarnation of those Lenin called ‘useful idiots’ — are of consequence because it is, I fear, likely that either Trump will be elected US president in 2024, or more likely because the orange buffoon will be 78 years old in 2024 and a man who is addicted to Adderall, a similar cynical player will stand and reap all the support Trump might have got.

What is worse is that the Republican party has allowed itself to be hi-jacked by an unscrupulous and mendacious failed businessman. Many intelligent and otherwise respectable Republican politicians have caved in to that unprincipled showman for the simple reason their political lives depends on ‘keeping in with Donald’. The key is

the electoral support Trump has: fall out with Trump, give your honest opinion about his — that he is a charlatan — and your voting support, all those who sincerely believe ‘the election was stolen’ and many of the other big lies Trump has told and tell, will desert you.

Ergo: you want to survive, play Trump’s game! It’s a simple equation. Stop playing his game and you are dead and yesterday’s congressman, senator, state governor.

There are thus very good reasons why many fear for democracy in the United States. To a great extent it depends on Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreeing to the same rules when it comes to battling over that rattle. But they no longer do.

If all it takes is for one side or the other simply to declare ‘we don’t accept the result of this poll’, in a flash democracy — even in apparently super-democratic US — is in dire risk of imploding.

Were that to happen, of course, it is equally possible that states would declare UDI and the US is in dire need of imploding. Fanciful? Not really, no. Who in 1985 when Mikhail Gorbachev became de fact Soviet leader would have believed that within five years the Soviet Union would no longer exist.

A betting man would have been given very long odds on that happening and made mint had he laid his bet. But of course he wouldn’t have done — why not just burn my money, he would have told himself.

Just last week a Canadian political scientist, Thomas Homer-Dixon warned that ‘By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship. We mustn't dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine.’

Aware of just how outlandish his suggestion might strike some people he added: ‘In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace.’

What is notable was that Homer-Dixon’s focus was not on the US, but the future of Canada: he was warning that a wise Canadian government would and should plan for every contingency, however fanciful it might seem now.

OK, this is just one prognostication of many and as always happen with such prognostications the author of the one in a 100 which ‘comes true’ is lauded, whereas the other 99 prognostications which did not ‘come true’ are simply forgotten now and forever.

What is pertinent, though, is the subject of this warning: the US a right-wing dictatorship within nine years? Surely some mistake? Well, one hopes so, but that it is even not considered likely is notable.

This is not — or at least this is not intended to be — just another anti-Trump rant. OK, so the guy is, from where I sit the mother of all morons. But that wouldn’t just be unimportant but in the context of the possible demise of democracy neither here nor there.

In that rise, future historians might regard him as a progenitor and bit player: the man’s narcissism made it possible, but what came next was of far greater consequence.

I’ll repeat: in 2024 he will be 78 and who know what the state of his health is. It is who follows his lead, who is equally willing to enlist the useful idiots to turn the US into a dictatorship where dissension is not just frowned upon but punished.