Does Trump Mean Progress?
What with Brexit and the election of Trump, many have said that Western society has taken a step back in its views, signifying regression, progress reversed, a deliberate worsening as some might argue. Perhaps it is possible that the whole world will not fall down at the hands of Trump, that World War Three will not begin and that a nuclear fallout will remain unseen.
I had been hoping Hillary Clinton would win, maybe you had too - I don't really care, though that was largely because I simply wanted Donald Trump to lose.
I didn’t have any strong feelings about Clinton, she seemed...reasonable. However, I lost all interest in the presidential election very quickly as a very personal battle seemed to be being fought between red and blue. Swords were wielded in the debates that saw no politics being spoke at all. Hillary rode of the backs of her social media team who tried to rally the youth armies by using emojis and vacuous hashtags. #GrowUp. Donald, meanwhile, looked to enlist the hard-right forces of the silver-haired troopers, gun-wielding landowners and those with a healthy bank balance.
I was able to assemble a vague sense that Hillary wasn’t all that, but at least she hadn’t said that Mexicans are rapists (every cloud and all that). However, it was clear to see that Trump was very strong is his speeches and debates to a point where it didn't matter what he said, everyone was just happy to be listening to something different.
Trump is so watchable - that’s surely something that we could all agree on regardless of political standing. It was funny to watch an orange man with funny hair being overly verbose and obscure yet being taken completely serious. When he puts on a statesmanlike face, you just know his inner monologue is delightedly singing 'You're the Best' by Joe Esposito. The politics of politics is that it’s not about what you say, it’s about relishing the role.
It seems that the general public have a perverted infatuation with an underdog; someone who appears unlikely to ever do well so we give them a chance. If this were the X Factor or some other similarly nondescript reality television show, Trump would never get voted out. We'd all tune in for week after week to watch the funny little man say his funny little lines in his usual funny little way, then we'd cheer because he looks so happy with himself just to have made it this far. Soon the joke would get tiresome to many people but the funny little man has already gained a significant platform for which to, either physically or metaphorically, grab us by the pussy.
Trump’s win came as a rather large shock to me for a number of reasons. Firstly, I wanted to witness his 'defeat' face, the one where he would try his very best to hide his sheer anger and disappointment that he was beaten by "Crooked Hillary".
Secondly, myself and other out-of-touch liberals had been pepping ourselves up with the fact that "he can’t win - it's impossible for him to win". "Out of the two worst presidential candidates in history, he is by far the shoddiest", we would say and then go about our business feeling smug in the knowledge that the world wasn't full of crazy people who would vote for a man like him.
My brain runs on a 'rational optimist' frequency and likes to pat me on the back with thoughts of "maybe he was joking when he said some of those things" and "maybe people will be there to restrain him". Am I really just a reality-denying fool?
As President Trump takes his seat in history, one can only wonder if a shiny new tomorrow is on its way and whether we will see it under Donald's leadership or in the PT years (post Trump). Perhaps Trump will act much like milk does which, given time, matures into cheese; a strong but smooth staple that is loved by the world. Or maybe we will just be left with something lumpy and off.
0 comments:
Post a Comment