August 2, 2019
Television news is a window into a dismal
present, a summary of the characteristics of a culture in crisis. Nightly we
see shootings, instances of police brutality, floods and other signs of climate
disaster and, to remove all hope for the future, Trump’s latest demented threat
to make it all worse.
For entertainment, we can be spectators at
the contest between the United States and the United Kingdom for the status of
most self-destructive nation. The
elevation of Boris Johnson has allowed the UK to close the gap. He and Trump are in a competition to
determine who can more completely isolate his country from the rest of the
world. Not being at Trump’s level of
ignorance and inexperience, Johnson’s bad ideas are more clearly
manipulative. According to a profile in
The New York Review of Books, he didn’t make up his mind until the last
moment whether to support or oppose the Brexit referendum. However, even Boris, of Eton and Oxford, has
his lapses, apparently believing that, after withdrawing from the EU, the UK
still would be a member of its governing council, the sort of delusion one
would expect of Trump.[48] By design or lapse, the Two Stooges are
leading their people to the cliff edge.
As different as they are, a description of
Johnson’s performance applies as well to Trump’s: “an act, a turn, a traveling
show.” That show is designed to entertain
and fire up the base: “In this theater of the absurd, it never matters whether
the stories are true; what matters is that they are ludicrous enough to fly
under the radar of credibility and hit the sweet spot where preexisting
prejudices are confirmed.”[49]
Meanwhile, the Democratic candidates are
having such fun tearing each other down, and even trashing the Obama
administration, and the House leadership is so determined to oppose
impeachment, that the odds of another four years of decline and danger on this
side of the Atlantic are increasing.
Actually, “leadership” is the wrong word for Speaker Pelosi. She appears to waiting for a popular demand
for impeachment.
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48. Fintan O’Toole, “The Ham of Fate,” August 15, 2019 Issue
49. Ibid
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