I like the Guardian, mainly because it pays its journalists and it is a respectable newspaper. It means well and it represents a saner time than the one we’re living in now. It’s on my side. Some of its columnists are outstanding writers and they helped me get through the terrible days of Covid when I could barely contain my rage at Boris Johnson and his nonsense, especially John Crace and Marina Hyde.
I still subscribe to and read it now, as the world is convulsed every day by another elected leader who behaves like a king. In the summer I started to think that the Grauniad wasn’t really keeping up with the chaos caused by the cruel old man who runs the United States. I took to YouTube and started to follow a few vloggers who have huge followings.
They are an excitable bunch but dedicated. Many of them look exhausted, which is not surprising, since they are up at all hours, like their mad president. If they have a fault, it is a tendency to sensationalise every little thing, and over optimism. I guess this is a function of the competition in their frenzied arena.
I often see a headline to a vlog that predicts it will end Trump’s term or have some other sensational outcome. It usually turns out to be interesting, but the same or similar to an item that a competitor posted the previous day, tweaked slightly to make it seem new. I don’t mind, because among the dross, there is real news, and they usually beat the mainstream press to the punch. More than that, they say and show things that the mainstream is too timid to cover. They have a touching faith in their first amendment rights; I’ll say that for them.
By following them I get stuff that you would not get from the mainstream. For instance, just what a shameless and relentless blagger the commander in chief is. Most of them follow Trump on Truth Social, where he does much of his grifting, only half joking that it relieves their viewers from having to do it. I don’t do X, or Twitter, because I never did and especially not now that it is owned by South Africa’s Gift to the World. Truth Social is not a rabbit hole I want to go down.
If you belong to the Trump cult – it really is one – and subscribe to the old maniac’s account, you get special stuff, like offers on his merch – dodgy looking watches and so on, all gold obvs, his crypto schemes and a Trump credit card. He also uses it to get money out of you.
In a recent example, a message appeared on the phones of the faithful saying that he (The President) was alone and frightened in the dark, in ‘The War Room’ because everyone had gone home, leaving only him to defend the country. This is not the actual wording, but it’s close. You could only make him feel better again by sending him some money. This was the President of the USA, in all his tawdry glory. All alone in his War Room, forsooth. The fat bastard was probably on the crapper.
You wouldn’t get this insight from The Economist, or the FT. Yet, without it, you don’t get the real flavour of just how crazy it is to drink the MAGA Kool Aid.
And yet. Endlessly, these citizen journalists blame Trump. This is starting to wear a bit smooth. He is certainly the most dangerously stupid and dishonest man to fill the office in my lifetime and probably for all time. But, he is in his second term, elected in a victory that crushed the Democrats. As well as his guilt in a litany of criminal offences and misdemeanors, he may be said to have incited or at least encouraged an insurrectional attack on the Capitol after he lost the previous election to Biden.
But there he sits in the White House, which, incidentally, he is either knocking down or covering in gilt. It is as if he intends never to leave. He has destabilised the entire world order and has now attacked a near neighbour, rich in oil, that he freely admits he covets. The military operation was not authorised, even debated, in Congress or Senate. How has he not been impeached?
Many of my vloggers believe in the system and look forward to great Democrat gains in the mid-terms and a majority in either or both legislative houses, followed by a landslide Democrat win in 2028. Me, I’m not so sure. If the Democrats win big in this year’s midterms or in 2028, I will bet the house that Trump says the elections were stolen from him, and this time he might make it stick.
Having attacked Venezuela and kidnapped its admittedly foul president, Trump is prating about running the country for its people until there can be a “…safe, proper and judicious transition.” No, me neither, but he said it twice, like he’d been told to. He didn’t explain how and when this would be done.
In the MAGA euphoria that followed this triumph, there has been renewed talk, first mooted in the summer, of the US taking over Greenland because it needs it “…for its security.” The US already has a military base there that I am sure it could extend if it negotiated with Norway.
The great man was at pains to emphasise that this was not for Greenland’s minerals or any other resources, since the US already has more of this than it knows what to do with. Which means that is just what it’s for. You see, Greenland is unfortunate to have a population of only 60,000 and to be rich in the rare earth metals so beloved of Trump’s oligarch backers. It’s not hard to see what might happen.
As to the Democrats, they seem like weak tea. Their great hope, the governor of California, Mark Newsom, was castigated by my most excitable vlogger the other night, for selling out to the oligarchs who finance Trump and MAGA. My boy was right – he has.
I like my vloggers, but it’s time they started to own Donald Trump, in all his unique ghastliness, as the logical consequence of their patronage heavy political system and a slavish devotion to their outdated constitution. He is their man. I’m pleased to say that one of them said as much today and so have others.
When you get down to it, the US has always been run by rich white people, financed by other rich white people. Nowadays, those doing the financing are younger, and richer, and super clever at technology. Worryingly, they know nothing about history, which they think is useless. Worse, they have their hands on the levers of the internet, the thing that really controls our lives. It really could be the end of the world as we know it. It could certainly be the end of US democracy.
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