Most people couldn’t care less whether Trump or Hunter Biden goes to jail. Nor apparently does either England or Europe. The issue is far more personal for much of the population throughout the Western world.
The latest campaign in Europe successfully road-tested a message that mixes a potent political cocktail — public anger over what is perceived to be out-of-control migration, the pain of voters facing high prices and the cost to individuals of fighting climate change. Trump is hitting these themes hard in battleground states that will decide the White House race.
There appears to be an emerging thesis that the Trump supporters (lately called “Maggots” on one platform) and by extension generally “far right” elements of American society, have collectively descended to racists resembling the dim historical past of both the Confederate South and German Naziism. These seemingly hardened, regressive societies make for good political fodder. Judging however by the depleted success of white racism and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the rest of the world is looking on with rising concern and increased determination to confront human need differently.
The Nazi Party was formed in Munich after World War I. It advocated right-wing authoritarian nationalist government and developed a racist ideology based on anti-Semitism and a belief in the superiority of “Aryan” Germans. Its charismatic leader, Adolf Hitler, who was elected Chancellor in 1933, established a totalitarian dictatorship, rearmed Germany in support of expansionist foreign policies in central Europe, and thus precipitated World War II. The Nazi Party collapsed at the end of the war and was outlawed in Germany.
Meanwhile the predictable back and forth between America’s two most popular political parties has fuelled the sentiment among less politically aligned personalities that both popular political persuasions are cradles of corruption and financial abuse, including the Supreme Court where judges are now routinely characterized as partisan and financially unprincipled.
Although President Joe Biden’s son potentially faces up to 25 years in prison for illegally owning a gun, the former president ― who was recently convicted of 34 felonies ― thought the jury didn’t go far enough.
In a statement to reporters, the Trump campaign called the trial “a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family, which has raked in tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine.”
In the result people are left to wonder, first, How did those people (our leaders) get there at all?, second, Is one really better than the other?, third, Who in their right mind would undertake a political career?, and, last, Where is the world headed with its enlarged threat of nuclear devastation? Hopefully the billionaires who are driving these disturbing political forces will be selfish enough to mandate the preservation of their mansions and themselves; or possibly their innate vanity and righteousness will be the end of us all. I think there can be no mistake that what is engineering political behaviour throughout the planet is only remotely related to universal survival and well-being; instead political ambition is singularly focused upon re-election and grasping votes as well as the inescapable draw of personal and private sustainability. Certainly we could take a lesson from the other members of the animal kingdom which survive by addressing only their personal needs without the added vulgarity of gold toilets and diamond tiaras; but even that purely visceral posture does not address what I believe to be the irrefutable ability of humans to transcend greed for humanity (that plain but indisputable description of our species’ evolution).
The demons however are not those in reputed control of the ship’s navigation; nor is it the wariness and reactions of the suffering masses in steerage. Just as the constitutions themselves were created by learned minds and foresight it is perhaps time to ask of the democratic process, How’s that going? The answer is not a simple rebuttal in the name of aristocratic or military oligarchy (the British model for centuries until they finally overcame their no less egregious tribal alliances and the divine right of the monarchy – a fiction which was once retailed and consumed as mystical) nor is it the North African or Asian prototype of superiority nor certainly anything that ever came out of religion (whether Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism or Muhammedanism). Instead the question is not, Who should get us there but where are we going? If there were any legitimacy to the American cry of peril on both sides, we’re in trouble!
Eventually the reality of mob rule will overtake the spineless politicians who after all are no better than any one of us. This isn’t a fight to the death; it’s a quest to survive. Time and again the Americans are predicting a downfall of their nation if one or the other political party is not elected to rule. Surely it is time for a greater objective than defeat. And I don’t see how either Trump or Hunter going to jail is any help
Photo by Benedetto©