Condemning Donald Trump’s cruel bigotry is easy — well, OK, maybe not for the Australian government, but for actual human beings with functioning consciences.
Then again, our country is so screwed up, our government’s response to the rise of the most extreme racist authoritarian president in US history is to ask him if he’s still ok to take desperate asylum seekers we won’t help, coz we are sick of the expense of torturing them in isolated hellholes.
In all the furore about that phone call between the Orange Freak preening about the White House and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the fact that the key topic was a proposal for cruel and illegal human trafficking gets forgotten. Not that it wasn’t a stunning spectacle to see Turnbull come into contact with a bigger ego for the first time in his life. And at least the orangutan with a dumb hair piece didn’t just spontaneously threaten to invade us mid-call, like he apparently did with Mexico.
The rise of Trump is extremely disturbing and dangerous, but it is always important to look on the bright side. For instance, anyone who ever wanted to see a replay of Caligula’s reign over the Roman Empire, only live-tweeted, is in for a real treat.
It is not just that the Trump administration is pushing measures of sheer evil, like letting Christian fundamentalists run riot or screaming ahead with fossil fuel projects to hasten an already developing eco-holocaust. It’s that it’s all so unpredictably unstable.
You never know what will come next. I wake up each day expecting to see a headline like “Trump Nukes China After Chow Mein Take Away Arrives 10 Minutes Late”.
I always knew a decaying capitalist system could slide into barbarism, but I never could have guessed neo-fascism would be this weird.
Then there is Trump’s attempts to communicate. I made the mistake of actually reading the transcript of Trump’s speech to the CIA just after his inauguration and I will never be the same again. I think I suffered multiple strokes during the first paragraph.
A Trump speech makes a William Burroughs novel look coherent — only without the excuse of truckloads of smack. A two-year-old learning to speak makes more sense. Trump starts sentences, then clearly forgets why. Much of what he says holds no logical connection to anything else.
For instance, in his first interview as president, Trump told the reporter: “We have to stop people from just pouring into our country. We have no idea where they’re from.” Well in that case, you small-handed alleged child rapist, how on Earth do you know where to build the fucking wall?
Of course, we should be careful not to exaggerate. For instance, just because Trump has banned all entry to the US from seven largely Muslim nations, that doesn’t mean it is a “Muslim ban”. It is merely a ban on Muslims from countries with which Trump has no business dealings. The distinction is clear.
Some of the complaints against Trump can seem pretty petty. Like the claims German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to explain to Trump about the Geneva Conventions. I mean, the guy is leader of the free world for God’s sake, he is far too busy to be reading up on international treaties on human rights from, like, last century! He’s got a wall to build!
And some of his measures are clearly justified. Like when a former Norwegian prime minister found himself detained at a US airport because he visited Iran in 2014. I surely cannot be the only one to have read that and shouted: “Finally! A world leader willing to take action against the real threat to peace and stability in the world today — retired Norwegian politicians!
“For too long these Norse bastards have lorded it over us, but no more! Not on The Donald’s watch!”
The explosion of protests and resistance to Trump has been a badly needed source of hope. Some leftists, however, want to complain about the protesters hypocrisy — where were they during Obama? Why aren't they protesting against this or that?
Leaving aside the protests that did occur during Obama’s rule (or did I just dream Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter?), it is a simple fact that it is impossible to have a rise in protests without that meaning people are protesting who previously didn’t.
Yes, the Democrats are hypocrites who commit war crimes and push racist policies. And no doubt they will seek to co-opt anti-Trump sentiment for their own ends.
But the alternative is to just sit passively and watch. Presumably the only point to complaining about anti-Trump protests is so you can have future conversations such as:
“What did you do during the Trump regime daddy?”
“I complained online about the hypocrisy of those opposing his agenda for their selective approach to protesting.”
“Did it work?”
“Yeah it got a few likes.”
After Trump hung up on Turnbull and called the refugee deal “dumb” on Twitter, it seems social media was filled with Americans desperate to apologise to Australians for their Commander in Chief’s rudeness. They seemed to think Turnbull is actually respected down here, or that anyone with a conscience is “offended” that Trump would spit on a deal that would never have been proposed in any decent society.
Well, don’t worry about it. Here’s a deal: you get rid of your mega-rich pro-corporate racist bastard of a leader and we’ll see what we can do about getting rid of ours.
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