On its broad folds the crowd which covered the roofs and filled the windows read with delight that memorable inscription, “The Protestant religion and the liberties of England.” But the acclamations redoubled when, attended by forty running footmen, the Prince himself appeared, armed on back and breast, wearing a white plume and mounted on a white charger.
The very senses of the multitude were fooled by imagination.
They contained much that was well fitted to gratify the vulgar appetite for the marvellous.
Excerpt From
Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay. “The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 2.”
In 2014 we began what is now our custom of wintering in the United States of America for six months each year. We continued to do so with the exception of 2020 – 2021 during the COVID pandemic. During the same period we have, largely by virtue of our relocation to and presence in the United States of America, become accustomed to follow American politics. Without a doubt the two features of American politics which constitute complete obstruction to our comprehension of Americans are the reputed predominantly Republican contradiction of vaccination and the belief that Donald J. Trump was robbed of his presidency by illegal voting count. For ones such as we who make a point of listening to both sides of the story – metaphorically FOX NEWS and PBS – we haven’t a clue why such a large number of Americans persist in objecting to what to us are elementary truths.
Initially Trump’s assertion that the election was stolen from him was taken and accepted merely as part of his on-going bravado and routine denial of fact. There is something instinctively insane about Trump, a petty person with limited imagination whose riveted inadequacies are the only things which sustain his deliberation. Trump did not however disappear from the political map as I had expected he would. He is not a young carcass, nor evidently particularly healthy – features which traditionally diminish popular charm on the entertainment scene. From what I can see, the only thing keeping him in business is his vulgarity – and the taradiddle and mercenary belief of many other thinking Republicans that it is not their place to contest the cultured and embedded beliefs of the masses to whom Trump so fortuitously appeals. This fortune-hunting of many Republicans has had the less than complimentary effect of translating their once haughty and implacable accusations against Trump to perverse and venal conscription (the contradiction of which is never explained by the authors of the rapacity).
Recognizing that there is always a reason for everything – and that people behave the way they do for a purpose – it has now become apparent that the Big Lies of election fraud and medical mendacity are irrelevant to a more grand and quite unrelated but far more pressing ambition which naturally is called “power” (the object of all politicians at the outset). It is increasingly clear to me from the analysis of that power objective that the goal is pursuit of the American Dream, a society of white people of Christian religion who believe in capitalism and white supremacy. Confounding that hierarchical image – itself truly pathetic fallacy, a feeling of deceit – is the burgeoning interpretation that the masses who support these perceptions are intellectually inadequate (or seriously uneducated) and more robotic than human. In a world where white skin and blond hair are themselves an accident of nature in the Northern Hemisphere, where to my thinking the majority of the global population has coloured skin, where religion is on the decline generally, where only 2% of the American population is Jewish (and I suspect an even smaller number are Muslim), it makes no sense at all – neither economically nor socially – to persist in the spectre of white supremacy or Christianity. Indeed, based upon the undeniable talent of people of colour or any religion everywhere, it borders on absurd to an Olympic degree to deny or ignore the value of improvement to be gained from association with those who have such evident worth.
This imperative, this reality – and its persistent objection by middle and southern Americans – leads to a further inescapable conclusion of mean-spirited and abusive behaviour. While it is possible to diminish the calculated intent of such Americans because of their own fear of the future and their inability to retain or maintain their erstwhile position in society, it is a sad excuse for being a bully.
This perception of the American pubic is hardly encouraging. We know of those who categorically refuse to visit the United States of America because of this creeping blemish. Meanwhile it has become as acceptable to taint Canadians as liberal firebrands, socialists bent upon nothing short of Communism and totalitarianism.
Contrasting this grim account of Americans is the equally vital report of Americans who are intelligent, generous and kind. It would be vastly unfair to stigmatize Republicans as greedy racists but it is impossible to evaporate completely the stench of innate superiority which Trump epitomizes. Any population which classifies a baseball game as a World Series suffers more than poetic distortion or pathetic fallacy.
