That ‘gathering’ at Congress, Washington, three years ago on January 6: peaceful protest by law-abiding patriots? Or armed riot by thugs and morons? You decide. And beware the back-room and rather bright cynics who know Trump is a moron but could prove to be a very useful moron

I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. For one thing I am Brit and our own political divide is between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. But even here in Britain, despite my strong views on many matters, I prefer to remain unaligned.

One reason is that I am thus not beholden to espouse views with which I might not fully agree or on which I have a more nuanced opinion.

A second, perhaps the more important, reason is that I can then call out folk and policies and behaviour when and if: I like to be able to speak my mind. And find the attitude of ‘my party right or wrong’ not just abhorrent and pernicious, but simplistic and, worst of all stupid. I shall not spell out my views on many matters, but if I have not already given them, where I stand should be apparent from what I write.

. . .

This entry is not intended to be read by MAGA supporters (or as I like to view them, MAGA buffoons). Like folk who still insist that ‘the world is flat’ or that ‘the Illuminati control the world’ or that ‘they are out there’ – ‘they’ being the operators of those many UFOs that seem to whizz about our skies and have either come to Earth to ‘warn us’, ‘bring peace’ or perhaps ‘invade us’, they are not to be shaken in their beliefs.

They ‘know’ what they ‘know’ and that’s the end of it. If you disagree with them, you have obviously fallen for all the ‘mainstream media’s “fake news” and so you are the enemy.

Thus MAGA supporters ‘know’ that ‘the election was stolen from Donald Trump in November 2020, that ‘crooked Joe Biden’ is the head of a crime family, that ‘immigrants from Mexico are being covertly brought into the United States so that they can vote Democrat’ and so on.

It is as pointless trying to debate or even discuss anything with such folk as it would be to try to teach a five-year-old calculus.

Nor is this entry intended for convinced Democrats. They, too, have long made up their minds and, frankly, some of them – I stress ‘some’ of them – can verge on a certain kind of zealous lunacy as much as the MAGA morons.

That broadly I happen to agree with them on many matters is neither here nor there. And there are plenty of bent – in the criminal and moral sense, not the sexual sense – Democrats out there, too.

For example, I was shocked when I first heard of the de facto ‘legal’ insider trading in stocks that takes place in Congress, and that one Nancy Pelosi with her husband is a leading insider trading offender. My jaw dropped, but that would have to be for another entry (if at all).

Here I shall merely record – it’s as true in Britain and Europe and I don’t doubt all over the world as in the US – that folk who like to come across as ‘on the side of the angels’, often quite ostentatiously, must be given even greater scrutiny. Note to young readers: never trust anyone ever who tells you how honest they are. And you will come across more than you think.

This entry is mainly aimed at the ‘don’t knows’, those folk who say ‘well, perhaps there is something in the claim that Trump was cheated out of the election’, the fence-sitters and the ‘I like to hear both sides’ pseudo-moralists.

Yes, it is true to keep an open mind. But when a man like Trump who braggs of ‘grabbing women by the pussy’, who objected to disabled and limbless US armed forces veterans taking part in a national parade because ‘it wasn’t a good look for [him]’, who at their graveside in Europe described World War One dead as ‘suckers and losers’ because they had died, who was described by his own Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as ‘a fucking moron’, who has destroyed the trust of several million US citizens in their judiciary, their constitution, their democratic systems, perhaps the time has come to close that open mind, take a more sober look at Trump and to take him for what he is.

. . .

Today is January 6, 2024, the third anniversary of ‘the events outside and later inside Congress in Washington in 2021. On January 6, 2021, many of Trump’s supporters, some with firearms, attended, summoned there by the man himself ‘to protest against “the steal” ‘.

The gathering, Trump still declares, was a ‘peaceful protest’. And when things turned ugly, he declares, he urged the protesters ‘to go home’.

There are, as you are aware, many different interpretations of what happened that day and what Trump did and, crucially, did not do.

Trump insists that the purpose of the ‘peaceful protest’ was to delay certification of the election result by vice-president Mike Pence while alleged electoral fraud was investigated.

Many believe him. A great many do not believe him one little bit and chose to regard that ‘peaceful protest’ as an act of insurrection intended to ensure that the election of Joe Biden as the new president could and would not be certified and that Trump would carry on as president.

Those doubters who think Trump might be right and that the gathering in Washington four years ago was merely a peaceful protest might care to look at the following photographs taken of that ‘peaceful protest’ at the time.

Whether it was or was not an ‘insurrection’, I’ll not address at this point. I’ll merely note that to my eyes – I also saw the event live on TV at the time – Trump’s alleged ‘peaceful protest’ was very much an armed and notably violent riot. But make up your own eyes, you ‘don’t knows’.

. . .

Another of Trump’s claims is that he had and has absolute ‘presidential immunity’ for anything he did that over the months of November, December and in early January. He says that he was duty-bound to investigate ‘allegations’ of fraud in his capacity as president.

This is another of his increasingly desperate attempts to get himself off the hook: the point was he was the only one alleging fraud – no one else was. All 62 of the suits he brought before court throughout the US alleging election interference were thrown out.

As for presidential immunity and Trump’s claim that he did nothing wrong, here is a very straightforward question which become ever more obvious once you hear it: if Trump ‘did nothing wrong’, why is he claiming ‘presidential immunity’? And as he is claiming ‘presidential immunity’, is he conceding that he did engage in criminal behaviour?

. . .

Whether or not Trump survives his four criminal prosecutions and whether or not he is able to stand for election is, frankly, neither here nor there. What is far more important and worrying is that he does have several millions of folk who believe his bullshit, who now no longer trust their courts and their democratic system. He has convinced them the courts and the Department of Justice are corrupt and that ‘democracy is being attacked’.

OK, so many of these folk are frankly stupid: they have to be stupid because there is no evidence at all to back up Trumps claims and he has produced none, and when they protest that ‘yes, there is evidence’, they can never produce it.

The point is that they and their sons and daughters who might inherit their stupidity and beliefs are not going away. When Trump is just another jokey footnote in US history, they will still be around to succumb to the blandishments of the lates Trump-shaped snake oil salesman.

But they are not the real danger: there are a great many quite bright and intelligent men and women who have no scruples about enabling Trump. Publicly and vociferously they repeat and amplify Trump’s claims. Privately they know it is all a load of horse shit.

Yet they also know that a second term Trump presidency will be ‘good for business’ whatever that business is. And they know that it is in their interests to boost Trump and his claims. It’s the ultimate cynicism.

You reading this should remember – or be told if you haven’t already known – that the rise to power of Adolf Hitler was also enabled by ‘big money’ who believed with him in charge they had a freer hand to make even more money.

That Hitler was in some respects off the wall (though he was cunning as Trump is cunning) didn’t bother them – they thought they could control the Austrian corporal. But they couldn’t: how wrong they were.

Who knows whether Trump will stand in November’s election. The polling shows that among Republican wannabe candidates he is way ahead. The polling also shows that in the few, very crucial, US states which matter, Trump is also ahead of Biden.

It doesn’t and would not matter whether Biden got a majority of the popular vote: both Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the majority of the popular vote when they stood. The US suffers under a very crappy and unfair ‘electoral college system’ which determines the outcome of the presidential election.

That it is scrappy, illogical and in 2024 wholly archaic is pretty much a fluke of American history, the electoral system evolving in this and that direction as more states joined the Union. What matters is that is how the president is chosen. Furthermore, any attempt – peacefully – to reform it, although there are many, many American voices calling for such reform, would be futile.

So Trump might well be the next US president: and then, America, watch out! He was ironically, quite restrained in his first term in office as he had one eye on being re-elected. A second term would also be his last term and he has made very clear what he would like to do. And it would not be pretty.