Like a wretched and merciless earthquake doling out continued aftershocks, that most unsavory and inappropriate of candidates, Brett Kavanaugh, was hastily confirmed over the weekend to join the highest legal office of the world’s “super power.” On these pages recently I could only write whimsically about a new order of political leader. Each time I’ve refreshed my news feed since then fills me with dread.
When will the next tremor strike? When will it all just stop?
That Kavanaugh’s appointment should come as any surprise is to belie the previous eighteen months of regular seismic shocks, and moments of social destruction, caused by Donald Trump and his self-serving administration of obnoxious dullards.
I am sure many people, like me, who take umbrage at Trump’s oxygen stealing existence on our planet, wake up each morning and feel that nervous anticipation of news of his demise as leader of the free world. But, here we are again, the Monday after another phase of utterly grim and depleting political subterfuge, with Trump at the helm, and we read and watch in despair.
Social media is lit up and, for all the brilliant satire that this administration has concurrently inspired, every news update, bar none, from the world according to Trump, casts an ever mushrooming, morose cloud of poisonous bigotry across our screens. Clogging fumes of festering carcinogenic elitism. And, like a cancerous foe in the system, Trump and his degenerate followers have so infected the world, in such a short space of time, that modern science stands even less a chance of making a diagnosis than if this were, indeed, some new super strain of cancer itself.
That so many other actors in this depressing play are complicit, too, only enables the effectiveness of the condition to spread. The power-brokers who granted this zealot a second audience on a UN stage, for example. Those who entertain the man on any level at any event, pandering to his “power”. Hoards of multi-national corporations making deals that will bolster the profits of their shareholders and benefit Trump’s own businesses, whilst squeezing the life and soul out of those who matter least in their eyes: the workers.
And, now, Kavanaugh. Another grimacing, shouty, right-wing arsehole granted special privileges and set up for life to preside over the fates of others.
When does this nightmare end?
The only consistency that this current steaming turd of a Government has followed is to ensure an increase in the vulnerability and marginalization of pretty much everyone else in the world that doesn’t look or think like them.
This is a President who was elected a week after tapes of him boasting about how being rich and famous enables him to grab “women by the pussy” were released, and who has continued to openly discriminate against women every day since. Just read that sentence again.
So, go figure, this same man lambasts Dr Christina Ford last week during a rally, just days after attempting to win kudos for authorizing an FBI investigation into Kavanaugh’s attempted rape of her. At the time, many commentators predicted this would be a sham of an investigation, yet we somehow crossed our fingers last week and hoped that, for the first time since he took office, something ever so slightly positive might come from having Trump in power. If you haven’t watched his public drubbing of her, do it now and click on the link above. Take it in. This is the President of the United States of America.
So here we are again. We now know definitively that the FBI investigation was yet another piece of theatre. Sick, depraved, unjust theatre. As is the case with the long list of roll backs already underway since Trump took office. Roll backs on topics such as reproductive freedoms, labour, the environment as well as the financial services industry. Take your pick. Each roll back dishes out harrowing implications for millions of people the world over.
Not a single piece of regulation on which Trump has smeared his sticky fingerprints could be said to have been made more socially or environmentally enhanced as a result. In terms of leaving a legacy, Trump is amassing a portfolio of such wretchedness that even Lord Voldemort would find the ramifications of them a little “on the nose”.
This is a man who has admitted to physically abusing women.
A man who tried to ban all Muslims from entering the United States (which ended in a diluted version).
A man whose Party is so at odds with the Democrats, and so addicted to fueling an era of modern day “hate,” that the eruption of a civil war is now more or less what many commentators are forewarning. David Neiwert’s thread on twitter this morning is just one of these worth reading (in my opinion).
Sat in Saigon like a lemon I write these words and I have no idea why and to what end they will do anything, save letting the fizz out of my anger for today. However, writing words, speaking out, and supporting the work of those fighting this current battle, we must.
Trump is the epitome of putting his mouth where his money is. The opposite must prevail – fund campaigns, fund organisations, fund journalists, mobilise within your community, talk to your peers, volunteer, rally, sign petitions. And don’t stop.
It is the only way to fight power.
saigonsays 