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Nov/Dec 3
EDITORIAL
Issue 50
November/December 2016
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Derek Moroney
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D
ONALD TRUMP impersonated a disabled
person. The new President of the USA has
incited violence at public events, lies casually
and pervasively, and thinks, and will act on
the basis that, climate change, the greatest
threat to human civilisation, is a hoax perpetrated by the
Chinese. Trump talks to crowds about the size of his
penis. “I guarantee there’s no problem. I guarantee you”.
Face it: there’s a lot of waffle and garbage being writ-
ten about how this man became President of a country
until recently great: as if it were an accident, an aberra
-
tion. It is a symptom of decline.
In 476 AD Romulus Augustulus, the last of the Roman
emperors in the west, was overthrown by the Germanic
leader Odoacer, who became the first Barbarian to rule
in Rome. The order that the Roman Empire had brought
to western Europe for 1000 years was no more. The
invading army reached the outskirts of Rome, which had
been left totally undefended. As early as 410 the Visig-
oths, led by Alaric, had prepared the ground, breaching
the walls of Rome and sacking it.
Empires get complacent and careless, sag and are
replaced.
After this awful election, The Guardian editorialised
that this was primarily an American catastrophe that
America has brought upon itself. "When it came to it,
America failed to find a credible way of rallying against
Mr Trump and what he represents". This seems about
right to Village, though in fact America has to take
responsibility for not wanting to rally against Mr Trump
and what he represents.
That’s the way it goes. History holds countries to
account for their governments, not their oppositions or
their tight elections. Some of the statistics are shocking
– all sorts of sectors that should have derided the lies,
the intolerance, the crudeness voted Trump in droves.
White men opted 63% for Trump and 31% for Clinton;
white women voted 53% for Trump and 43% for Clinton.
54% of male college graduates voted for Trump. More
18- to 29-year-old whites voted for Trump (48%) than
Clinton (43%). Inevitably, a quarter of Americans born
since 1980 believe that democracy is a bad form of gov-
ernment, many more than did so 20 years ago; for
democracy in America isn’t working.
Michael Moore, who in the end campaigned for Clin
-
ton, claims that people must stop saying they are
“stunned” and “shocked”, saying: “What you mean to
say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying atten-
tion to your fellow Americans and their despair”.
Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, consid-
ers that: “It is more accurately understood as a
repudiation of the American power structure. At the core
of that structure are the political leaders of both parties,
their political operatives, and fundraisers; the major
media, centered in New York and Washington DC; the
country’s biggest corporations, their top executives, and
Washington lobbyists and trade associations; the big-
gest Wall Street banks, their top officers, traders,
hedge-fund and private-equity managers, and their lack-
eys in Washington; and the wealthy individuals who
invest directly in politics”.
Fine but it wasn’t just a repudiation, it was an accept
-
ance, an embrace: of Trump.
Although inequality is rising and middle-class incomes
are stagnant a lot of the negativity about the US is simply
illusory. Around 80% of Trump supporters say that, for
people like them, America is worse than it was 50 years
ago. That is false: half a century ago 6m households
lacked a flushing lavatory. Analysis of polling data by
Gallup reveals that the core Trump supporter is actually
slightly better off than other working men, more likely
to have a manufacturing job, less likely to be exposed to
globalised competition and more likely to live in a
homogenous white community.
Some of the pessimism emanates from those threat
-
ened by gender and racial equality, some just comes
from the decadence of thwarted hubris.
There is much that is great about America: the free
-
dom it so vigorously champions, its facilitation, more or
less, of a melting pot, its role as peace enforcer. But the
balance has turned negative. America is the home of ine
-
quality, of greedy and throwaway consumerism, of
mediocre cultural homogeneity, of too many colonial and
oil-securing wars.
What we have witnessed in the miserable contest
between a dynastic, technocrat who has made a fortune
from politics and a sociopathic, racist, misogynistic fas-
cist is a simple manifestation of decline.
The problem is that sophisticated empires don’t easily
recognise their fates. In the era of climate change and
global terrorism a decadent empire in denial could bring
us all down with it.
Ronald Reagan campaigned in 1980 on the sunny
slogan that it was: Morning in America. Donald Trump,
of whom there is indeed something of the night, has
brought Evening to his country.
EDITORIAL
NEWS
Frank Connolly
Frank Connolly
Niall Crowley
Deirdre Younge
Neil Markey
Stephen McDermott
POLITICS
Brid O’Brien
Marisa McGlinchey
Fiona Finn
Conor Lenihan
David Langwallner
Mary Murphy
cometh Anna Visser
Lorna Gold
Lynn Boylan
OPINION
John Bolger
Niall Crowley
Gerard Cunningham
MEDIA
Gerard Cunningham
CULTURE
Mark Clinton
ENVIRONMENT
Emma Gilleece
Tony Lowes
George Monbiot
INTERNATIONAL
Anthony Coughlan
David Langwallner
NJ McGarrigle
US ELECTION SPECIAL
Constantin Gurdgiev
book review by Matthew Farrelly
Conor Lenihan
Ed Moloney
Michael Smith
CONTENTS
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