- Opinion
- 24 Aug 16
The rise of Donald Trump offers the scary prospect of a crazed facist taking control of the White House. Chillingly, Putin, Erdogan and Rodrigo Détente in the Philippines are just three of the many political leader, cut from the same cloth.
The dog days are done. Summer’s on the wane and, in the US, the Presidential race is well and truly on. 2016 has already proven extraordinary and at times downright weird. While there was considerable interest in Bernie Sanders’ strong run in the primaries, the universal gaze was drawn again and again to the bizarre Republican Party circus, ring-mastered by Donald Trump. And he’s not done yet.
His rival Hillary Clinton has asked how you could entrust the nuclear button to someone who reacts with such intemperance and rage to tweets. Indeed. Trump has said gross, unbelievable, bizarre things. He’s a kind of Super-troll, bringing below-the-line ranting and abuse right into the mainstream.
Some of it might have been dismissed as ignorance and stupidity, or vulgar verbal bullying and sneering – abusive off-the-cuff comments harking back to his career on the US version of The Apprentice.
He really does seem to regard the whole thing as a huge reality television show. You want to win this week’s episode, so you say whatever you think will get you there, however incendiary. Like, at his campaign launch in 2015 he told everyone how he’d deal with immigration:
“I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me. Believe me. And I’ll build it very inexpensively. I’ll build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”
Or, after two radicals went on a shooting rampage in San Bernardino, he called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” In the ABC Presidential Debate he added to that: “I would bring back waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
Advertisement
Deal With The Devil
One could devote an entire column to his misogyny. For example, he wasn’t happy with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, who had moderated the first Republican debate and sneered that: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her… wherever.”
As for Huffington Post founder Ariana Huffington, he called her “unattractive, both inside and out.” And he added “I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man – he made a good decision.”
He is also on record as saying that “You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass”. And he has claimed: “…the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.”
Charming. He’s racist too. In one tweet he said: “According to Bill O’Reilly, 80% of all the shootings in New York City are blacks – if you add Hispanics, that figure goes to 98%, 1% white.” One might also wonder about his ability to add.
And he’s a so-called ‘birther’. This time four years ago he tweeted that: “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud.” Chillingly, it was re-tweeted over 7m times and got over 5m likes.
He doesn’t much care for the media. Pointing at reporters at a rally in South Carolina he shouted “Absolute dishonest, absolute scum. They’re totally dishonest.” Turkey’s Erdogan would approve. Putin too.
In all of this, it’s not just that his tone is intemperate and he’s expressing despicable views. His language is also very close to that of Isis and Iranian fundamentalists, not to mention 17th century witch-finders and the Spanish Inquisitors.
For example, earlier this month he attacked Bernie Sanders for expressing support for Clinton. He stated that Sanders had “made a deal with the devil. She’s the devil”.
The thing is, both Trump and his followers probably believe in “the devil” and may well think it legitimate to attack a woman they describe in that way. Hence the alarm at his recent comments at a rally in North Carolina, which sounded like a wink and a nod in favour of assassination.
He denies this – but what he said was deeply irresponsible, to say the least.
Decline Of Freedom
A comparable nasty has emerged in 2016 already, in the person of recently elected president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte. This fellow waged a similarly wild and unpredictable electoral campaign, often using foul language to disrespect authority figures, both local and international.
Recently he called the US ambassador a gay son-of-a-whore, remarks described as “inappropriate and unacceptable” by the US. But he “will not apologise for anything. He did not apologise to me when we saw each other. Why should I apologise to him?”
Duterte also shows scant regard for namby pamby concepts like human rights and legal procedure. He urged the Philippine police to kill drug dealers and, within days of his swearing-in, the police were reporting that thirty “drug dealers” had been killed. So, now you have a situation where extra-judicial killings are normalised.
Advertisement
Watching the rapid decline of freedom and due process in the Philippines would make you fear for the US if Trump was elected. After all, as we know from the Black Lives Matter campaign, there’s already too much casual violence and killings by the cops.
That’s not to say we endorse Hillary Clinton. Different risks attend her possible election including the prospect that, while there might be fewer guns in the US, there may well be more elsewhere in the world.
But we can’t underestimate the potential significance for women in general, should she become the first female President. Overall, a Clinton presidency would probably be a case of known unknowns and known knowns, rather than being plunged entirely into an unfathomable lottery that could take the world just about anywhere. Including into kingdom come.