Trumpocalypse now

October 15, 2016 by Leave a comment

Well, as I forecast, the Trump campaign has gone into meltdown, though I hesitate to claim too much credit for a feat of prognostication on a par with predicting that the sun will come up in the morning.

The election may be all over bar the shouting, but it does look there is going to be a lot of that before polling day rolls around, now that Trump has gone into full-on Nazi mode, railing against the vast conspiracy ranged against him, all orchestrated by shadowy “global financial powers” (hint: he means the Jews).

Trump’s strategy to consolidate the angry white male vote is not completely insane; as Nat Silver has shown, if it was up to the guys he would be a shoo-in. Fortunately, the 19th Amendement is a thing (however much the alt-right wishes it wasn’t), and the rest of the world can breathe easy knowing that the distaff side of the US electorate will keep us safe from disaster.

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St Louis massacre

October 9, 2016 by Leave a comment

In news which has shocked – shocked! – the Republican hierarchy, it turns out that Donald Trump is an entitled, misogynistic asshole. Who knew? Despite Trump’s attempts to brush off the whole affair as the youthful indiscretion of 58-year old, it looks like this might be the point at which the wheels finally come off his increasingly unstable bandwagon.

If we were talking about anyone else but Trump, I’d say there was slim chance that the situation could be turned to advantage; Americans love a redemption narrative, and a display of humility and contrition at tonight’s debate might just be enough to persuade wavering conservatives to suppress their misgivings about Trump in the cause of keeping Clinton out of the White House. I’ve no doubt those of his advisors who haven’t yet jumped ship are begging him to follow that strategy, but I’m equally sure that he’ll ignore them and stick with the aggressive counterattacks that seem to be the only response he has to any adversity.

So we can expect an entertaining, if unedifying, spectacle in St Louis tonight; Trump becoming increasingly unhinged and incoherent, as Clinton stands back and looks presidential. If the GOP haven’t dumped him by this time tomorrow they might be looking at a defeat of historic proportions come November.

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Undebatable

September 28, 2016 by Leave a comment

The dust has settled after the opening Presidential debate, and the consensus among the pundits seems to be that, in the battle between the know-all and the Know-Nothing, Hillary came out clearly on top.

The Clinton camp’s tactics were spot on; burnish their candidate’s credentials as a competent, if slightly dull, technocrat, while gently goading Trump into damning himself in the eyes of undecided voters (particularly women) by exploiting his almost Pavlovian inability to resist responding to criticism, or even contradiction, with bigoted invective.

Trump, meanwhile, appears to be calculating that the demographic he already has locked down – angry white guys essentially – will be enough to carry him over the winning line. That’s optimistic; even if he can motivate his base to turn out in big numbers, the list of groups he has insulted, belittled, threatened, or otherwise pissed-off is extensive, and they’ll be queuing up to vote against him.

I’ve no doubt that there will be more twists in this story between now and November, but I’m sticking to my prediction; Hillary will win.

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Pool’s re-opened

September 26, 2016 by Leave a comment

We’re not the only metaversally-orientated blog that’s woken from a coma recently; after a gap of nearly three years the legendary Alphaville Herald has started updating again, with Peter Ludlow back at the helm. (Presumably he has time on his hands after leaving his last job just before getting fired for sexual harassment).

Ludlow, through his alter-ego Urizenus Sklar, has proclaimed a new mission statement for the publication, promising to extend his characteristically overwrought analysis from the virtual realm to real life, specifically contemporary US politics, on the somewhat shaky grounds that “Real Life has become a virtual world”.

So far the fruits of this project are limited to amusing but fairly pointless trolling of an obscure white-supremacist, but presumably it will move on to consider the whole Trump phenomenon, which, representing as it does the griefing of the entire body politic, should be right up Ludlow’s street.

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Come what May

July 13, 2016 by Leave a comment

Rather sooner than expected we have a new Prime Minister; Theresa May has ascended to the top job in a fashion that, even for this country, seems astonishingly undemocratic. The chaotic state of the opposition may incline her towards seeking a personal mandate by way of an early election, but, given that her predecessor exited after an ill-judged consultation of the population, I suspect that is a temptation she will resist.

One of May’s first actions has been to appoint her erstwhile opponent Boris Johnson to the post of Foreign Secretary, presumably working on the principal that one should keep one’s friends close, and one’s enemies closer. Still, it seems like a risky choice; Johnson’s decidedly undiplomatic style will probably have us at war with half of Europe before the month is out.

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Obscure future

July 11, 2016 by Leave a comment

Well, for about 109 minutes there it looked like I might have finally produced an accurate football tournament prediction, but no luck, for me nor France.

My political forecasting skills are not much better; despite my confident assertion that Boris Johnson would be the next Prime Minister he didn’t even make it on to the ballot. Instead we are to have a female premier, which sounds like it should be progressive, but neither Theresa May nor Andrea Leadsom are exactly hard-core feminists, so perhaps not.

There had been talk of an early election, but that possibility seems to be receding, and with it hopes that Brexit could be averted by some sort of democratic means. There are a couple of legal cases pending that seek to overturn the referendum result, but, aghast as I was at the leave vote, I would hesitate to change the outcome by such a method, since it would only drive already alienated sections of the population into the arms of the far-right.

I guess we just have to play the long game; as the Chilcot Report has shown, progressive positions are usually vindicated with the passage of time, even if it is years too late to make any difference.

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So long, farewell, auf weidersehen, goodbye

June 27, 2016 by Leave a comment

Well, it’s been a few days, and no government minister has come on to the TV to tell us it was all a mistake, and they’d miscounted or something, so I guess I’ll have to accept that Brexit is a thing, and it is going to happen.

I’m not alone in my reluctance to believe that a majority of the population have chosen to follow a course of action which, however one looks at it, seems imprudent to say the least; numerous Leave supporters apparently thought they were casting protest votes that wouldn’t actually change anything, and even the leaders of the campaign appear to be flabbergasted by its success, and to have no idea what to do next.

David Cameron has resigned, hardly surprising given that he had needlessly precipitated the biggest foreign policy blunder since the loss of the American colonies, leaving the ship of state rudderless just as we are about to hit the rocks. Boris Johnson, Cameron’s likely successor, doesn’t inspire much confidence, but, since the opposition have chosen this opportune moment to to descend into internecine warfare, it looks like we will have to rely on him to negotiate a good exit deal with our now thoroughly pissed-off neighbours, while simultaneously trying to stuff the fascist genie back into the bottle, which might be quite a challenge once the disaffected masses find out that the Leave campaign promises were just empty propaganda.

All in all the outlook is gloomy. The one ray of light, in this neck of the woods at least, is that there may be a second independence referendum, giving us a chance to stay attached to Europe, and gain a little breathing space to start rebuilding some sort of progressive movement. A lot of pieces will have to fall into place before we’ll see a happy ending though.

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Separation anxiety

June 20, 2016 by Leave a comment

Last week wasn’t a great one for anybody who has some residual belief in the intrinsic goodness of humankind, what with homophobic mass murder and political assassination, set against a background of the cross-Atlantic crypto-fascism that underpins Trumpism and Brexit.

I’m still just about convinced that there is no way the US electorate will take leave of its collective senses and hand the keys of the republic to the Donald – there is a non-negligible chance that he won’t even make it on to the ballot – but domestically I’m much less optimistic that the Remain case will win out out once the votes are counted in the EU referendum this week.

The consequences of a Leave victory hardly bear thinking about; economic meltdown and the far-right triumphant just for starters, with worse to follow. I’m hoping that the looming reality of such a doomsday scenario will focus the minds of those on the left who are thinking of voting for an exit, or abstaining, and convince them that such a course of action is absurdly risky. I’m aware that there is a perfectly sound progressive case against the EU, but that’s a fight for another day; it’s clear that in the current political context nothing good will come from handing a victory to the most reactionary elements of British society.

It’s all an unsettling reminder of the way that one’s life can be upended by events almost completely outwith one’s control. I guess I’ll know by Friday whether my gut feeling that people are basically decent is accurate, or hopelessly naive.

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Exit Flagger

May 4, 2016 by Leave a comment

In a development that seems at once unbelievable and inevitable, Donald Trump has emerged triumphant from the Republican nomination process. While this means that we will be denied the amusing spectacle of a contested convention (to the relief, no doubt, of the citizens of Cleveland), it does promise lots of entertainment over the next six months as Trump leads the GOP to a humiliating and perhaps fatal defeat.

In contrast, the election we are having here tomorrow has generated a campaign of insufferable dullness, as our politicians have largely avoided controversy in a rush to paint themselves as competent technocrats. Not for us anything like the exciting, if somewhat limited, campaign of Bernie Sanders; the left in these parts is so thoroughly marginalised that even centre-right social democrats can paint themselves as radicals. On the other hand, we haven’t given time to any fascist demagogues, so I guess our political culture has that going for it.

But any temptation we UK leftists may have to feel smug about the stupidity of the US electorate, or at least the Republican segment of it, for entertaining the notion of a President Trump, is likely to be squashed over the next few weeks, as we approach polling day in the Euro referendum. While the issue hasn’t quite caught fire with the public yet, all sorts of reactionaries have been crawling out of the woodwork, and it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the vote could go in favour of Brexit, a result that would negate most of the social progress of the last half-century. While our transatlantic cousins will probably step back from the abyss by electing Hillary, we might end up jumping right in.

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High times

April 20, 2016 by Leave a comment

Another 4/20 has rolled around, and I’m glad to say that it’s looking like the tide of marijuana legalisation is unstoppable, in the US at least. The dope business is booming in Colorado and Washington, and, more importantly, pot is becoming an uncontroversial part of everyday culture. It’s not hard to imagine that weed will be legal in most if not all of the country before President Clinton finishes her first term.

It’s not clear how much impact this will have on drug policy in Europe, but hopefully the successful US experience, not to mention the tax dollar bonanza, will nudge things in the right direction before too long. At the very least it’s given me another incentive to plan a long-overdue trip Stateside sometime soon…

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