Topped Trump

Unpopular leaders should change their policies, not the rules.

I’m no fan of Donald Trump. He cost me money.

Back in 2016, I naively still believed that part of the job of my little corner of showbiz was pointing out the absurdity, and pricking the pomposity, of any deserving member of our narcissistic elites, no matter where they stood on the political spectrum, without fear or favour.

So when I bounced into a writers’ room where a well known anti establishment comedian was working with a couple of friends of mine on his latest heterodox screed, and predicted that because Hillary Clinton had just described half of all Republican voters as ‘a basket of Deplorables’, Trump was going to win the forthcoming American Presidential election, I expected a bit of back and forth banter. A few jokes at both Trump and Hillary’s expense. What I didn’t expect, was never to be invited to work with that comedian again.

I wasn’t in any way ’cancelled’ and maybe the comedian had just decided he no longer liked my stuff (It happens. Fair enough). But it seems in retrospect that maybe my real crime, along with the fact that earlier in the year I’d been naively open about my support for Brexit, (an absolute no no, it turns out, in the open minded, convention busting business of show) was not taking a side.

Or more specifically, the correct side.

Not immediately condemning Trump as an orange skinned Nazi racist pussy grabbing giant, (but tiny handed), baby, while extolling Hillary Clinton as some beneficent, ceiling smashing mash up of Emmeline Pankhurst and Rosa Parks.

To my English eyes both candidates seemed pretty awful. But while Trump was genuinely funny, and for want of a better term, a bit more ‘punk’, Hillary seemed both priggish and entitled, and clearly hadn’t learned the Gordon Brown lesson. Don’t dismiss people you hope will vote for you, as bigots.

It was weird. One insult lost it for Hillary. While a whole tsunami of insults won it for Trump. And if that’s not funny. I don’t know what is.

But I’m not here to criticise Hillary because…well let’s just say I don’t want to find myself waking up next week feeling surprisingly suicidal.

And I’m wary about even mentioning Trump. Because somehow we now live in a world where the defence of someone’s rights, or freedom of speech, is automatically taken instead as an absolute endorsement of the entirety of their views. And even a red flag for unsavoury ultra alt MAGA far right wing proclivities.

Which helps explain why so many people, me included, feel uneasy about defending the rights of some ‘controversial’ people or groups. Because we are worried our defence will be wilfully misconstrued as a ringing endorsement and be used against us.

It’s also clear that engendering this fear in people is entirely intentional. You don’t need to censor people’s speech, if they feel compelled, to censor themselves.

So anyway. Here goes.

Trump is going on trial in 2024. Coincidentally, the same year as the next US Presidential Election. And a federal judge has recently announced the date of his first trial.

There were a lot of possible dates to choose from. Perhaps as many as 366. But the judge decided on  March 4, 2024.  Coincidentally the day before Super Tuesday, the day when the Republican Presidential Nominee is likely to be decided.

Trump, in this first case at least, is facing accusations that he ‘conspired to obstruct an official proceeding’ and attempted to orchestrate an insurrection by interfering with the results of an election. By somehow overruling, or persuading electors at the United States Electoral College to switch their votes.

Seems a tall order. How would he get them to do that? Well coincidentally, a bunch (what’s the collective noun for Hollywood celebrities? I’ll go with a ‘sanctimony’) of Hollywood celebrities suggested just such a course of action when Hillary ‘lost’ in 2016.

They too urged delegates to the Electoral College to ignore the voters, and go their own way instead. Only their goal was to deny Trump the Presidency, because they claimed his win was illegitimate.

Trump somehow cheated his way to victory, probably with the help of the Russians, so our democracy loving celebs were here to, for want of a better phrase, ‘stop the steal’.

I’m no expert on the American Constitution, so if you want to know more about one mechanism Trump could have used to overthrow the democratic vote in 2020, here’s a handy how-to guide which fantasy president Martin Sheen and friends put together for the Democrats in 2016. 

But Trump of course is accused of orchestrating a riot, not a toe curling celebrity video. And one of those is definitely worse than the other.

And I’m not saying this in his defence. Because what Trump did was indefensible. But it might be worth noting that not all riots are bad. Some are good. And there is often no way of knowing which is which, until the nice people on the TV come out and tell us.

So sometimes it can be tricky to know in advance if your riot is going to be one of the good ones, or one of the bad ones.

But let’s be careful not to let Trump off the hook here. This systematic and partisan attack is no orchestrated witch hunt. Putting Trump on trial for election interference in a manner which is clearly designed to interfere with an election is not election ‘interference’, it is simply Justice at Work.

And let’s remember if you don’t like these charges there are plenty others.

In Florida Trump faces charges of illegally retaining Top Secret government documents. Coincidentally the same sort of documents that Joe Biden still has in his garage since his time as Barack Obama’s vice president. So that is a serious charge and he must be held accountable.

And then there’s the grubby matter of Stormy Daniels. Trump has been accused of false accounting after he paid the actress hush money so she wouldn’t talk about their affair.

Trump, the only man to have ever payed a porn star to keep her mouth shut, allegedly gave Ms Daniels $130,000. But she still went on 60 Minutes to tell her side of the story. So not exactly The Donald’s best ever deal.

Good luck to her.

Of course it’s always worth reminding the voters that Stormy Daniels is/was a porn star and adult film actress. Coincidentally, just the sort of free spirited young lady who you might see popping up, just when a naked Hunter Biden is popping up, on the webcam of his ‘all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation’ laptop.

I’m not sure exactly what false accounting is, but it sounds bad.  Very bad. In fact it’s probably worse than say, if the close family member of a top politician sold access, sorry, ‘ the illusion of access‘, to that top politician to dodgy governments, and foreign companies, and then hid those payments behind a haze of shell companies and crack smoke.

It’s definitely worse than that.

Because imagine what a power like Stormy Daniels might do, with access to American trade secrets or classified foreign policy intelligence. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

OK. Enough already.

As I say at the top of this article. I’m no apologist for Trump. But you really don’t have to be a buffalo horn hat wearing shaman to see that something rotten is going on here.

Absolutely Donald Trump should be held accountable for his actions. And if he has committed any real crimes, then he should answer for them.

But I can see why his supporters are so enraged when there doesn’t seem to have been, at least up until now, any serious attempts to investigate the similar allegations that have been made about Joe Biden and his family. And when credible accusations are made, they are often downplayed or dismissed by a clearly partisan media.

(I know that a special prosecutor has been appointed to investigate the Hunter Biden case. But it seems a half hearted, half measure, pretty much the least they could do, considering the history of the case, all the evidence and seriousness of the accusations. Similarly the Republican impeachment proceedings against Biden are just a tit for tat nothing burger.)

Of course I’m an outsider. I’m not an American. I don’t have a dog in this particular fight. But I do care about dog fighting in general.

Because we call this type of fight ‘democracy’. And it’s built on the assumption, that all things being equal, and with the caveat that all politicians are untrustworthy sleaze ball charlatans, that the fight is essentially free, and fair.

But when one side is apparently marshalling all the powers of the State to put the leader of the other side in prison, just before an election, then it feels like neither.

OK. Maybe you don’t care. Trump’s a monster and deserves what he gets. Boo hoo. Tiny violins. Orange man bad, and all that. I get it.

Sure they’ll bend the rules a bit here and there, maybe employ some double standards, come down particularly hard on Trump, and his supporters, or go after him for infractions that wouldn’t bother you, if your guy, or maybe even a different one of their guys, was committing them.

Trump is a special case, he’s uniquely bad, he represents a genuine danger, and so the ends justify the means.

This is a one off. A one time deal.

But even if you believe that, and I don’t, it’s only in the special cases that our principals are truly tested.

Michael Dukakis vs George H W Bush never had the potential to cause a constitutional crisis. To shake the foundations of democracy itself.

And if you don’t defend fairness and transparency for Trump. How can you expect others to defend fairness and transparency later, when perhaps the one being targeted is your guy/gal?

The assumption is of course you won’t have to. As I said, Donald Trump is a unique case.

Once we’ve got rid of The Donald, cauterised the Trumpist infection, everyone will agree/be forced to agree, on a broad post liberal, progressive identitarian technocratic consensus. The Republicans will finally choose a ‘sensible’ leader, (No, not you Vivek) balance will be restored. We can all go back to normal.

Of course ‘normal’ in this case means, that when it’s time to pick a new president the electorate will be offered the choice between two competing frontmen/women, whose policy differences are pretty much indistinguishable. With both sides committed to little more than fleecing the public, and the public’s great grandchildren, while fortifying the status quo, and pretending to represent some kind of ‘Change’.

Can we really expect the public to keep swallowing this nonsense?

Yes We Can.

A democracy which refuses to let Trump, and people like him, exist, which fights him in the courts, rather than at the ballot box, and conspires to silence and deny a platform to inconvenient opponents, is no democracy at all.

And it’s not just America.

Germany hasn’t got the best track record when it comes to good governance.

So you’d expect its leaders would think twice before playing fast and loose with democratic norms.

But that hasn’t stopped The President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and other members of the German elite from calling for the outlawing of right wing party AfD.

AfD is the second largest party in Germany, currently polling at around 20%. So a lot of Germans seem to agree with its anti immigration, anti green, anti paying for the Ukraine War, agenda.

The majority of AfD support is found in East Germany. The poor bit.

Unemployment is higher, wages are lower and opportunities are lacking. (For a more detailed analysis check out brilliant Substacker Eugyppius.) Whatever the German version of ‘levelling up’ was after reunification, it clearly hasn’t worked.

So it’s no wonder the voters in the east feel abandoned by the liberal elites in Berlin. And that there is a growing sense of resentment.

But instead of listening to the concerns of AfD supporters, the elites brand them as extremists.  And threaten to ban the only political party which currently provides them with a voice.

Of course it’s all done under cover of tackling ‘hate’. That nebulous term which can mean exactly what you want it to mean. But often simply relates to the under educated and under employed, having opinions and priorities, which are in opposition to the interests and narratives being pushed by the ruling classes.

Look, maybe the AfD are extremists, the BBC seems to think so, the linked article seems pretty fair to me. And it doesn’t paint a very pretty picture.

But when Sadiq Khan brands mums who wants to drive the kids to school as ‘far-right’, it can sometimes be hard to distinguish between what are ordinary people expressing their legitimate scepticism at having globalism, mass immigration, and progressive ideologies imposed on them, and what is genuine jack booted enthusiasm for annexing the Sudetenland.

The danger is that in attempting to ‘save’ democracy you risk destroying it. By outlawing ‘extreme’ voices, you slowly narrow the range of acceptable opinion, until in the end, only one voice remains. What started off as a democracy mutates into a de facto one party state. The very thing we claim we were trying to avoid in the first place.

And it is not simply the silencing of the opposition which threatens democracy. It is also at risk when one particular voice is given primacy over others. Even if that is being done for, what on the surface, might seem perfectly legitimate reasons.

Australia, a democracy since 1901, seems to be retreating from the idea of one person one vote.

The Voice to Parliament referendum which will take place in October seeks to acknowledge the part that indigenous peoples have played in building the BBQ strewn spider playground which is modern Australia.

Seems reasonable on the surface. Very few would deny that aboriginal peoples have had a very bad deal over the years. It’s pretty grim.

But this referendum is potentially the worst thing to come out of Australia since Rolf Harris left for England in 1952.

The basic idea is to establish what will essentially be a third chamber in the Australian Parliament. Populated exclusively by representatives from indigenous peoples. Its role would be to ‘advise’ parliament ‘on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’.

This advice would be non binding.

But as the current Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese admits. ‘It would be a brave government’ which ignored it.

The proposers say the Voice to Parliament would have no veto over government policy. But of course it de facto would.

I’m no legal eagle. But since the indigenous people are Australian citizens, it would be almost impossible to argue that any proposed new law does not affect them.

The danger is you effectively end up with a pseudo democracy, where there are extra votes for some.

And who gets those extra votes is decided by historical grievance and identity politics.

Identity politics is not only divisive, self selecting and riddled with inconsistency. It is explicitly designed to take power from the majority and give it instead to particular minority groups. All of course, in the name of justice.

A kind of reparations in the form of privileged representation.

What could go wrong?

It is pretty obvious that if you explicitly empower one section of the electorate over another, you immediately open up your system to (even more) rent seeking, lobbying, special interest groups, pork barrel politics, and you know, good old corruption. All things that we have traditionally considered some of representative democracy’s worst features.

You’d think Australians had enough to worry about with skin cancer, koala chlamydia and crocodiles.

Unsurprisingly opponents of the Voice to Parliament are, just like Gillian Duffy, Brexiteers, AfD voters, London’s van drivers, and Trump supporters before them, dismissed as bigots, racists and Neanderthals. Which we know, is not always a vote winning strategy.

Initially popular, the Voice to Parliament is losing ground in the polls. It still might succeed. But if does, I expect Australians will come to (kanga)rue the day they voted it through.

Voice to Parliament might have started with the laudable aim of enshrining social justice in the Australian constitution, but it’s all part of a broader attempt to reframe democracy around identity, and delegitimise empiricism and the needs of the majority.

But why not switch things up a bit? After all, the existing electorate keeps voting for all the wrong things. Yes Trump and Brexit. But also Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Vox in Spain, and now the AfD.

There is definitely a crisis of democracy right now. Faith in democratic governments across the western world is at an all time low. What will fix it?

I’m not sure. But maybe the first step to healing the relationship between the state and the electorate isn’t to lock up your opponents and ban them from having a platform.

Or to give extra votes to your favoured special interest or racial groups. In the name of ‘equity’ of course, but in reality because you know that on election day those votes are significantly more likely to come your way. It’s so cynical, gerrymandering in the name of justice.

Perhaps in a democracy, listening to what people actually want and acting on it is a good place to start.

While treating voters like thick as mince hate mongers who can’t be trusted around nasty words and bad ideas, probably isn’t.

You can’t have a democratic system which only works when everyone agrees with each other. Because democracy is not rule through the ballot box as much as it is government through debate.

We choose our leaders through argument. Sometimes heated, yes, but the moment one side resorts to force, and legally banning a party, or imprisoning your opponent is undoubtedly a demonstration of force, then that argument is lost.

If the elites can’t persuade people to vote for them, they should first try changing their policies, not the rules.

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As ever I’d love to hear your comments.

What do you think about the indictments against Trump? Is he the victim of a witch hunt? Or does he deserve everything he gets? Or maybe it’s a bit of both.

And where do you see Democracy under attack?

There’s a whole post to be written on lawfare and the way our politicians are passing the buck on difficult decisions, referring them to ‘independent’ institutions and extra government bodies. I mentioned some of this here.

But that’s it for today.

Thanks again for reading. See you next time.