Most of the reports about Trump take the form of ‘news’ in the trivial sense, i.e., what happened today and has never happened before. But this is where the ‘news’ lets us down. In the 19th century newspapers printed entire speeches by politicians: and when I say entire I mean entire: Gladstone’s Midlothian speeches, which went on for hours, were printed in newspapers in their entirety. This makes 19th-century newspapers a great historical resource. Go to the British Newspaper Library in Colindale and have a look. This was even so in the early 20th century: I was once looking up speeches from 1918 and found a lot of them printed at least in part. Now, of course, the journalists – the mediators of the media – have intruded themselves and their critical capacity – so that they predigest everything we consume. They should not be called the fourth estate but the first stomach: preparing pap to soothe our baby brains, our sensitive skin, the safe space of our miconium-only guts.
I say this because, by accident, I listened to some of Donald J. Trump’s speech to the National Rifle Association in Dallas, Texas. I cannot be bothered to listen to it twice or even seek out a transcript, so rely on recollection. It was a shrewd performance, full of characteristic Trump flourishes: the wry exaggeration, the explicit identification of himself with the people, a shrewd balancing of moral and political imperatives, an exceptionally adept – as it seemed to me – blend of humour, sarcasm and finally straight condemnation of wrong, and, above all, the sort of policies which one simply never hears in our own craven country.
Trump said (I shall fall back on the orthography of a few centuries ago): Biden’s regime is crooked – it is composed of socialists, communists, fascists – they have tried to tie me up in a court case – you might have heard of it – I know more about law than anyone now – on day one I will deport illegal immigrants – I campaigned on the wall in 2016, and it was successful, so my advisers wouldn’t let me talk about it in 2020, but it came back – they don’t care about our country – we dealt with abortion, sending it back to the states, which is what every lawyer had advised – abortion is a difficult subject: one has to do what is right, but also what is necessary to get elected – and the key is to get elected, to win by such a majority that election trickery is impossible – the National Rifle Association should encourage gun-owners to vote, as they don’t vote – Hispanics and blacks are polling in higher numbers than ever before for the Republicans – I will change electoral law, so that one can only vote in person with identification – on day one I will settle all these wars – Ukraine and Russia will be settled – Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism will be defended – no school or university will be able to insist on a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate – police and lawyers will be indemnified – anyone who shoots a police officer will be imprisoned for 10, not six, not nine, 10 – Joe is worse than the worst 10 presidents, perhaps 15 – only Jimmy Carter is happy, as his presidency is now vindicated – and recollection falls short: though I remember thinking that it sounded as if Trump, or his speechwriters, had managed to assimilate all of the Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy robustness of attitude about policy matters into a single agenda.
It comes across fairly mightily. Trump sounds genial, vindictive, and has the ability that Chatham was said to have in the 18th century of saying what his supporters would like to have said as soon as they hear him say it. He sounds forthright, not obviously hypocritical, but humorous enough to grant himself some legroom later on. The great question is whether any of this will have any force when he comes into power: but there is no question that he has understood that there is even more appetite in the United States of America for a Country politics against the Court of Democratic Washington D.C., against Hollywood, against New York, against CNN etc., than there was in 2016.
The gap between the United States and the United Kingdom is very great. There is nothing even slightly as politically robust as this in our country. Anyone who utters a single Trumpian precept would be called ‘far Right’ on the spot, and, sadly, would believe it, and accept the rebuke, resign, go about in sackcloth and ashes. The woeful situation in the United Kingdom is a consequence of the fact that we have been governed by the Conservatives since 2010; and a very weakened, Blairite conservatism they have exhibited: eager not to rattle the cages of the civil service and BBC executives. What is the explanation?
The answer is a deep one, and forgive me for shifting to academic matters, but in order to explain Donald Trump, I think I should mention John Greville Agard Pocock. Pocock died in December last year, in his late 90s. He was a historian: originally from New Zealand, educated in Cambridge when it was still a university and not an encampment, and ended up in America, though he retained British citizenship until the end – though, as a New Zealander, he was resentful of the European turn of the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the author of books I have read, but which few others are likely to read as their subject matter was arcane, but also because he wrote in a long-handed and old-fashioned manner, combining erudition, fastidious scholarship, long sentences and light irony in a way that can offer pleasure to only very few. However, like everyone important, he threw out a few interesting arguments, and one of them is highly relevant to us.
He wrote a lot about English political thought, and also American political thought: and one of his findings was that in the late 18th century England and America parted ways – historically, philosophically – as well as politically. Let me explain.
England in the 18th century was Whig, latterly Tory. But whether Tory or Whig, it was a Court society with a Court politics, and had more or less taught itself to control Country opposition to Court politics by using various constitutional expedients, up to and including corruption, but also eminently by defending the old-and-new order of King and Church, Commerce and Empire by arguing that the constitution was a balance of King, Lords and Commons: so the Government did not exclude but represented the people, in more than one way.
America did not object to the King. But it disliked Westminster, and hence Parliament. So long before it rejected the King it rejected the ‘Old Corruption’ politics that it associated with the Court of Walpole, Chatham, North etc. Pocock argued – in his most famous book The Machiavellian Moment – that what America ended up with in the late 18th century, after the War of Independence, in its attempt not-to-be-British (even though they were all British), was a form of politics which had its ancestry in the thought of the early 16th century Florentine republican Niccolo Machiavelli and the mid-17th century English republican James Harrington: a politics of an armed militia, of citizen soldiers, of extreme wariness about federal government and its corruption. Even the ‘Federalists’ like James Madison were wary of federal government: throwing in a hundred ‘checks and balances’ to stop the United States from becoming as unbalanced as the old hypocritical and corrupt English system. But others, like Jefferson, were even more wary, and helped along various things such as phrases about ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’ and of course the various Amendments to the American Constitution, including the famous second amendment, so disliked by that 21st (unconscious) Court politician Piers Morgan: the right to bear arms – an old Machiavelli-and-Harrington policy. If you cannot trust the government, and you cannot, then you must have your own arms, and you shall.
Pocock said, in addition, that England, though it looked corrupt (even to some of its own citizens) in the late 18th century, soon – in the early 19th century – undertook reforms of a very different cast. It got rid of corruption, but it did so in a very different way to the Americans. The Americans tried to deal with corruption by granting rights to the people and limiting federal government – opening the way for a populist politics. But the English in effect completely closed down populist politics by first eliminating the King and Lords, so that the only salient institution was the Commons, and by then reforming the Commons so that it was obviously less corrupt than before. The effect of this, in the United Kingdom, was to create a more or less harmonious political order which was harmonious because it made concessions without sacrificing anything to the people as such.
Now, I am not saying one is better than the other. There are things to be said on both sides. In some ways British politics of strong central parliamentary government has looked superior to American politics of weak federal presidential government in the last century or two. But we notice the effect now, when politics is changing everywhere: politics in the United Kingdom is centrally controlled, the leakages are plugged, the Overton window is closed, it is hard for ordinary voices to be heard; but, in America, we see political discourse in a relatively unbuttoned register, with a bit of old cowboy morality: as if freedom of speech is not a policy, or an aspiration, but a habit. And this is a good thing. It is good to hear it.
None of this means that Trump is to be admired for what he will do: but it is certainly good for political discourse that his voice exists.
Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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Those proclaiming to save the planet are the ones destroying nature the most. Always the way with socialists and their divine faith in authority.
I agree. I’ve commented for a while that often what is trumpeted as ‘environmentally friendly’ is often environmentally harmful. Say that to a climate zealot though and you can see them mentally sticking their fingers in their ears.
It’s worse their entire brain explodes and they just accuse the bird munching critic of being Hitler.
They destroy ecology on land. The Bird Choppers mangle some 500 birds p.a. per turbine it is estimated. Oceanic impact will the same. Ecology being destroyed, fauna disturbed and killed. All to save Gaia from the fictictious plant food-causes climate-theology. We as a society, are both stupid and corrupt.
Not to mention what the very large blocks of concrete that anchors them are doing to the land in terms of water drainage. As I’ve mentioned here before, part of a Lancashire village flooded a few years ago (it never had before). It was initially blamed on “global warming” until they discovered that the wind farm on the hill above had changed the water course, diverting it from channeling into the river on one side of the hill to channeling down a straight road and into the village on the other side.
I actually think most people are confused, distracted and highly trusting rather than stupid and corrupt.
No, they are simply stupid. Look how many took Death Jabs, it takes a heck of a level of stupidity to do that.
Perhaps someone should ask His Hypocritical Majesty of Windsor about the destruction of marine mammals by the windmills he is making a fortune out of, courtesy of British taxpayers.
Yet another outstanding article. Thank you.
‘Fifty years ago, environmentalists would have raised hell about a thousand dead whales and dolphins. Now they are part of the cover-up.’
Why?
Follow the money.
China pours money into lobbying via organisations like The Peoples Forum, a source of funding for many left of centre, including environmental, organisations.
That is why China’s fishing fleet plunders the world’s oceans without any of the protests once seen against, for example, Japanese whaling ships.
“[China] says its distant-water fishing fleet numbers roughly 2,600,” Ian Urbina, an investigative reporter and member of the High Seas Initiative Leadership Council at The Aspen Institute, pointed out in a Yale School of the Environment report.
“But other research, such as this study by the Overseas Development Institute, puts this number closer to 17,000,” he said in 2020.
Why this matters: In 2022, the East Asia Forum reported that “Chinese fishing fleets have trespassed into the waters of over 90 countries and depleted fish stocks.”
Two tier policing of the world’s oceans…..
In 100 years time, if there are still humans around? will they look back and say what a good idea it was to cover the surface of the planet with windmills and solar panels, or will they look back and rue the madness that lead to this ludicrous folly that very nearly wrecked the planet and killed many of it’s plants and animals?
As they negotiate their way round the huge junkyards of scrapped EVs, Windmills and Solar Panels that we failed to re-cycle will they say oh well never mind it had to be done to save the planet or will they wonder if there was something funny in the water that sent us all mad enough to engage in this planet wrecking folly?
The planet wrecking folly option.
Wall-E?
Ruling the planet, eh sorry I mean saving it, means Dolphins Whales Fish Birds Bats and any other creature that gets in the way may become casualties of war——The war on YOU?
You go back a few decades and it was all about the whales. They would give Norway and Japan a hard time. And you could understand it given their intelligence and the remarkable nature and complexity of their communication. Satan doesn’t care for whales and dolphins at all. He dislikes their frankness and carefree nature and he wants the seas depopulated except for monsters just like the land.
I wonder if the first peak has something to do with the exploration and seismic testing prior to the first windmills being put up?
Thanks Chris for keeping on the case and us informed.