It was inevitable that Trump’s presidency would end this way: in scandal and ignominy, fear, loathing and shame
THE surprise isn’t that it ended this way, but that it took so long.
From day one way back on 20 January in 2017 — when he ordered his press secretary to lie to the media about the size of the pitiful crowd at his inauguration — it was written in the stars that Donald Trump’s presidency would finish in scandal and ignominy, fear, loathing and shame.
A president who spent his last fortnight hiding in the White House out of sight, if not out of mind; a pariah to his own party, shunned by all but his closest family and last few loyal staff, at the final hour having even been spurned by his sycophantic vice-president. …
Trump lit the fuse, but scenes from the Capitol on Wednesday are the culmination of an unraveling of US democracy over 40 years
IN the end, even the most rusted on Trump loyalists could bear it no more.
“Count me out. Enough is enough,” Lindsey Graham said on the Senate floor on Wednesday.
Graham was speaking once order had been installed in the Capitol building, hours after a wild mob in red MAGA baseball caps and waving Confederate flags had broken into the home of American democracy, rampaging through its corridors and chambers with impunity, looting and pillaging at will, and terrorising those within, including elected representatives. …
The signs were there from the very start that 2020 was going to be a year we wouldn’t forget
SO that’s 2020 done with then.
I’ve never been much for celebrating new year’s or for the concept that flicking the calendar over to a new page will magically eradicate all the problems of the past 12 months. After all, on the Chinese calendar, the Year of the Rat (how appropriate) does not finish for a few more weeks. These are just arbitrary dates, heavy with the symbolism of a fresh start, but to nature it means nothing. Life goes on, good and bad.
But as a student of history, I am drawn to the idea that years can take on a particular character almost as if they have a life of their own: 1066, for instance — or 1789 or 1968 or 1989. …
As we grapple with what has gone so wrong in contemporary America, revisiting Springsteen’s back catalogue helps to begin to explain it all
BRUCE Springsteen toured Australia for the first time in 1985, when I was 16. Up to that stage, he’d had a couple of minor hits here — ‘Born To Run’ and ‘Hungry Heart’ were already staples of FM radio — but was nowhere near being a household name.
But his seventh album, Born In The USA, released in 1984, had been his global smash breakthrough, and the Brian De Palma-directed video for ‘Dancing in The Dark’ was a regular on Countdown, alongside Prince’s ‘When Doves Cry’, various Madonna hits and Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’. …
Trump’s refusal to leave office peacefully is an imminent threat to democracy
The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him . . . He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s gone . . . he died like a dog, he died like a coward. He was whimpering, screaming, and crying . . . He didn’t die a hero.*
REMEMBER the liberation of Baghdad from the evil and brutal regime of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in April 2003?
Remember the scenes of jubilation as Iraqis young and old marched triumphantly through the streets of the capital to Firdaus Square, where they watched a noose being placed around the neck of a massive statue of Saddam and then the statue was tugged forward by a crane pulling on the rope, hanging in mid-air for a moment, and then snapping in half, the head and upper body crashing to the ground? …
Celebrate this brief moment in the sun, because storm clouds are already gathering after Joe Biden’s victory
The election of Joe Biden feels as if a dark cloud has been lifted from above the United States. Even if there are further storms on the horizon, now is a time to celebrate Donald Trump becoming a one-term President (although it hasn’t sunk in for him yet).
The unrestrained joy seen on streets across the US has been echoed around the world because Trump was the ugly American personified. This bloated orange buffoon with his fake hair and fake tan was even more unpopular outside of his own country than he was within it.
But the 2020 election has been far from an total victory for Joe Biden and the Democrats. Biden faces a Herculean task to get on top of the biggest public health crisis in a century, pull the US economy out of recession, and heal a badly divided nation, all while the Republicans do everything they can to make him fail. …
The US is sliding into oblivion as a failed state, and the election of Joe Biden won’t save it
AMERICA, you blew it. You had four years to prepare to deliver a comprehensive repudiation of Donald Trump and Trumpism and show the rest of the world he was an aberration, and you fucked it up.
Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States, but it will be a hollow victory because the tight result is just as much a win for Trump’s brand of fascism. It leaves the US more divided, more polarised and more violent than it was four years ago.
Hunter S. Thompson got it right all those years ago when he wrote shortly before Richard Nixon’s second election win in 1972: “This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we really are a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.” …
Only one thing is certain after all the votes are counted: the US will be even more polarised and divided following the 2020 election
THE night before the US Presidential election, I went around to a friend’s house to watch the new documentary about Hunter S. Thompson’s ill-fated 1970 bid to become Sheriff of Pitkin County.
What better way to prepare for the most important election in our lifetime than to revisit that doomed attempt by a ragtag bunch of hippies to take on the Aspen establishment.
The Battle of Aspen was in some ways a proxy for the much larger battle for the soul of America being fought across the nation at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s.
With the carnage of the Vietnam War in the background, Baby Boomers found themselves in pitched battle against their parents’ generation. Music, sex, drugs, fashion and were flashpoints as much as politics in this conflict. From this tumult, Richard Nixon emerged as President in 1968. …
In this news report relayed from the future, the current incumbent of the White House comments on the death of former President Donald J. Trump
23 August, 2033 — Washington D.C: US President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has described the overnight death of former President Donald J. Trump as the final end to “the darkest chapter in our nation’s history”.
In brief remarks after opening a windfarm on the outskirts of Los Angeles which will supply enough electricity for the entire southern part of California and create several thousand permanent jobs, the 43-year-old President said Trump’s four years in the White House had been “a stain upon our democracy”.
Trump, 87, died in Moscow, where he has lived since being forced into exile following his failed attempt to hold onto the Presidency after the Joseph Biden “blue wave” of 2020. …
Democracy itself is at stake in the US Presidential election
THE rest of the world may not have a vote but that doesn’t mean the US presidential election on 3 November is of no consequence to those of us living elsewhere. Far from it. This election is the most important in our lifetime wherever we may happen be.
The stakes are incredibly high. If Donald Trump wins, not only will it usher in the final decline of the American empire, but it will send a signal to other right wing strongmen that fascism is back in fashion.
But if he loses, it will provide a glimmer of hope that values like decency, optimism and truth still matter. …
