First Blast of the Wimmyn against the Monstrous Regiment of Trumpers
For all those who are still literally shaking with laughter at the childish tantrums of the self-defined losers in the recent US elections, well, OK, I can raise a smile too, but it's a bit of a squiggly one. Obviously, living in Ecuador I'm only slightly less removed from the ripples of consequences than if I lived on Neptune (I refuse to entertain the possibility that either Trump or Clinton could pinpoint Ecuador on a map, though I'm willing to concede that Clinton would at least home in on the right latitude: she's a Wellesley girl, after all, and the name is a bit of a giveaway); there's bound to be some sort of butterfly effect, but not knowing what that will be prevents me from going all vaporous over it. Whether the OPEC per-barrel goes up (allowing the university where I work to buy some toilet paper) or down (forcing me to scavenge in bins behind Chinese restaurants) I guess really depends on which pussies yer man grabs and in which order, and I don't think anyone really can predict that with the requisite degree of accuracy: I mean, just look at the pollsters and Dow Jones.
I honestly don't think he's going to build a Great Wall, or try to do an El Cid and kick out the infidel from the North American continent: these "policies" being as far as I can tell examples of what Americans call "shooting the shit", an increasingly prominent feature of US electoral campaigns, consisting of talking bollocks and making frivolous assurances to be forgotten as soon as the Wisconsin results come in (Do you Know the Way to Guantanamo Bay?). No, it's not that. What concerns me is that, living in Ecuador, over the past few weeks especially it has been impossible to get through a single day without someone remarking, well within earshot, "este Trump es como Correa en versión gringa": by which I mean that the similarities between the new US President-elect and the sitting Ecuadorian President are, for anyone whose geographical location induces them to make the comparison, so overwhelmingly obvious as to constitute a virtual cliche.
Put simply, both Trump and Correa are populists through and through. This means that their decisions are guided and informed not by any ethical principles, spectacularly absent in both cases, nor, except residually, by ideological leanings or farsighted pragmatism, but almost solely by the desire to gain and consolidate power in the short to medium term, in obedience to drives at once authoritarian and narcissistic. The populist, obscurely conscious of the power of his inspired showmanship and tabloid "divide and rule" rhetoric, sees in the cheering crowds not a dangerous beast to be tamed, as does the traditional career politician, but a mirror in which to gaze at his own image, behind which lurks a shadowy, wounded and rancorous ego. Instinctively, he will surround himself with éminences grises whose job will be to hold the mirror before him at such an angle that whichever way he looks and whichever road he takes, the Will of the People will smile back at him, raising a candy-cotton thumb in admiring approbation. These people (does anyone yet know who they are?) will have the real power. A good deal of it, anyway.
And we don't know what they will want to do. Or, given the checks and balances, whether they will be able to do it.
What we can be reasonably sure of is that they will need an Enemy. All populists do. Well, all politicians do, but populists need one more than anyone else. They know that without the Enemy, there is no reason on earth why their cycle of popularity should last any further than that of the latest hit single or the latest "Name Of Country's Got Talent" sensation. In Correa's case, the pseudo-leftism that currently sells votes in LatAm dictates a long list of enemies, inter alia: the World Bank and IMF, US Imperialism, the CIA, the Plan Condor redux, Neoliberalism, "selfish bankers", "the Opposition", los de siempre, "cocktail-swilling mummies", traitors and antipatriots. Most of these enemies are imaginary, and their effectiveness as bogeymen tends to fluctuate over time, but they have served so far. Unfortunately, the list doesn't stop there, but extends to include the Ecuadorian middle classes, routinely denounced as "pelucones" (snobs). That, and the constant spectre of secret plots, shadowy coups, "destabilization" etc, has succeeded in keeping open a suppurating sore in the center of the Ecuadorian polity, maintaining a divided and polarized society. To see where this leads, all you need is to look at Venezuela. This is why I don't like populists.
I have no idea who will turn out to be Trump's go-to Enemy of the People. Despite absurd accusations of "misogyny" (see previous posts), we can be quite sure it won't be women: after all, he's married to one of 'em. Allow me also to doubt (pace Lacey Green and her "white America") that it will be "blacks". It might be Muslims, I suppose. Or terrorists. Or Muslim terrorists. Or Mexicans. Or Democrats. Or "Liberals". Or poor people. Or rich people. Or the serried ranks of the unchristian and antipatriotic. Or some combination of the above. Whoever it is, you are going to get tired of hearing about them: that's almost the only reasonably confident prediction I can make at this stage. That and the fact he won't build that wall, since if he did, Mexicans would no longer be a credible Enemy any more. For the populist, problems are not there to be solved, but to be exploited. Solving them is strictly a desperate measure of last resort.
The other thing that one's experience as an Ecuador-dweller allows one to expatiate boringly on is the conflict between populism and anything remotely resembling freedom of speech, or of the Press. It is, I suppose, uncontroversial that since the accession of Correa Ecuador has become a notorious free-speech black spot on the world map (even the UN have started complaining about this recently, bless 'em): that's why, incidentally, I am forced to blog under an assumed name. In the case of Trump, it hasn't escaped one's notice that even before the election he had already talked about weakening First Amendment guarantees, opening the floodgates of libel suits against the Press, and somehow "closing down parts of the Internet". I don't know how much of that can be discounted as more empty sloganeering, but it was disquieting enough to turn me instantly into an antitrumpista as soon as I heard it: I've already seen where that sort of rhetoric can lead. Sorry, but I have.
So this is what depresses me about the world I'll be leaving to my son when I pop my clogs. A world of cheap Manichean rhetoric of one sort or another, a world of us and them, and another kind of walls.
I'm not sure what the alternative would look like. However, for the sake of full disclosure, I might not have bothered writing this post were it not for the dream I had last night, in which former Xovernor of Alaxxa and Xexublican Xice Xresidential nominee Xarah Xalin xxxx me a xxxx xxx. (I have x'ed some words in consideration of her status as respectable married woman: what she gets up to in my dream world is surely no one's business except hers). It was the best dream I've had in at least six months, in spite of a certain lack of narrative coherence. Certainly the least dry. Whether it has any political significance (in the dream I seem to remember she was the new President Elect, though I may have got that bit wrong), or points the way forward to some future renaissance in US politics, is not yet entirely clear to me.
All I'm saying is that I think if it had been her and not Trump, everyone would have been deliriously happy.
Everyone except the xnobs, of course.
I honestly don't think he's going to build a Great Wall, or try to do an El Cid and kick out the infidel from the North American continent: these "policies" being as far as I can tell examples of what Americans call "shooting the shit", an increasingly prominent feature of US electoral campaigns, consisting of talking bollocks and making frivolous assurances to be forgotten as soon as the Wisconsin results come in (Do you Know the Way to Guantanamo Bay?). No, it's not that. What concerns me is that, living in Ecuador, over the past few weeks especially it has been impossible to get through a single day without someone remarking, well within earshot, "este Trump es como Correa en versión gringa": by which I mean that the similarities between the new US President-elect and the sitting Ecuadorian President are, for anyone whose geographical location induces them to make the comparison, so overwhelmingly obvious as to constitute a virtual cliche.
Put simply, both Trump and Correa are populists through and through. This means that their decisions are guided and informed not by any ethical principles, spectacularly absent in both cases, nor, except residually, by ideological leanings or farsighted pragmatism, but almost solely by the desire to gain and consolidate power in the short to medium term, in obedience to drives at once authoritarian and narcissistic. The populist, obscurely conscious of the power of his inspired showmanship and tabloid "divide and rule" rhetoric, sees in the cheering crowds not a dangerous beast to be tamed, as does the traditional career politician, but a mirror in which to gaze at his own image, behind which lurks a shadowy, wounded and rancorous ego. Instinctively, he will surround himself with éminences grises whose job will be to hold the mirror before him at such an angle that whichever way he looks and whichever road he takes, the Will of the People will smile back at him, raising a candy-cotton thumb in admiring approbation. These people (does anyone yet know who they are?) will have the real power. A good deal of it, anyway.
And we don't know what they will want to do. Or, given the checks and balances, whether they will be able to do it.
What we can be reasonably sure of is that they will need an Enemy. All populists do. Well, all politicians do, but populists need one more than anyone else. They know that without the Enemy, there is no reason on earth why their cycle of popularity should last any further than that of the latest hit single or the latest "Name Of Country's Got Talent" sensation. In Correa's case, the pseudo-leftism that currently sells votes in LatAm dictates a long list of enemies, inter alia: the World Bank and IMF, US Imperialism, the CIA, the Plan Condor redux, Neoliberalism, "selfish bankers", "the Opposition", los de siempre, "cocktail-swilling mummies", traitors and antipatriots. Most of these enemies are imaginary, and their effectiveness as bogeymen tends to fluctuate over time, but they have served so far. Unfortunately, the list doesn't stop there, but extends to include the Ecuadorian middle classes, routinely denounced as "pelucones" (snobs). That, and the constant spectre of secret plots, shadowy coups, "destabilization" etc, has succeeded in keeping open a suppurating sore in the center of the Ecuadorian polity, maintaining a divided and polarized society. To see where this leads, all you need is to look at Venezuela. This is why I don't like populists.
I have no idea who will turn out to be Trump's go-to Enemy of the People. Despite absurd accusations of "misogyny" (see previous posts), we can be quite sure it won't be women: after all, he's married to one of 'em. Allow me also to doubt (pace Lacey Green and her "white America") that it will be "blacks". It might be Muslims, I suppose. Or terrorists. Or Muslim terrorists. Or Mexicans. Or Democrats. Or "Liberals". Or poor people. Or rich people. Or the serried ranks of the unchristian and antipatriotic. Or some combination of the above. Whoever it is, you are going to get tired of hearing about them: that's almost the only reasonably confident prediction I can make at this stage. That and the fact he won't build that wall, since if he did, Mexicans would no longer be a credible Enemy any more. For the populist, problems are not there to be solved, but to be exploited. Solving them is strictly a desperate measure of last resort.
The other thing that one's experience as an Ecuador-dweller allows one to expatiate boringly on is the conflict between populism and anything remotely resembling freedom of speech, or of the Press. It is, I suppose, uncontroversial that since the accession of Correa Ecuador has become a notorious free-speech black spot on the world map (even the UN have started complaining about this recently, bless 'em): that's why, incidentally, I am forced to blog under an assumed name. In the case of Trump, it hasn't escaped one's notice that even before the election he had already talked about weakening First Amendment guarantees, opening the floodgates of libel suits against the Press, and somehow "closing down parts of the Internet". I don't know how much of that can be discounted as more empty sloganeering, but it was disquieting enough to turn me instantly into an antitrumpista as soon as I heard it: I've already seen where that sort of rhetoric can lead. Sorry, but I have.
So this is what depresses me about the world I'll be leaving to my son when I pop my clogs. A world of cheap Manichean rhetoric of one sort or another, a world of us and them, and another kind of walls.
I'm not sure what the alternative would look like. However, for the sake of full disclosure, I might not have bothered writing this post were it not for the dream I had last night, in which former Xovernor of Alaxxa and Xexublican Xice Xresidential nominee Xarah Xalin xxxx me a xxxx xxx. (I have x'ed some words in consideration of her status as respectable married woman: what she gets up to in my dream world is surely no one's business except hers). It was the best dream I've had in at least six months, in spite of a certain lack of narrative coherence. Certainly the least dry. Whether it has any political significance (in the dream I seem to remember she was the new President Elect, though I may have got that bit wrong), or points the way forward to some future renaissance in US politics, is not yet entirely clear to me.
All I'm saying is that I think if it had been her and not Trump, everyone would have been deliriously happy.
Everyone except the xnobs, of course.
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