Trumpism

Following Donald Trump’s first wave of caucus elections for nomination as American president it’s worth examining how a man so manifestly unsuitable for the office has managed to achieve serious consideration of such an eventuality. 

The quick answer, as widely discussed by most of the media – American and non-American – is that Mr Trump has enchanted a large segment of the population into being convinced that all is seriously wrong with their country, and that this perception more than merits his campaign slogan Make America Great Again (MAGA).

His deployment of this alluring meme resonates with deeply held, all-is-wrong resentments circulating through much of the electorate, propelling them into the voting booth, there to choose and elect some truly startling candidates.  How has it come to this?

The immediate answer to the question is that we have been here before. Elections seem to focus on one or two topics of burning interest and contention.  US elections over the past century, for instance, have not failed to feature that socio-political element which we label as immigration; or rather, anti-immigration. It is currently the hottest topic of the 2024 campaign.

This perennial focus of attention has gone through a variety of labels, such as nativism.  According to the historian John Higham nativism is:

“an intense opposition to an internal minority on the grounds of its foreign (ie“un-American”) connections. Specific nativist antagonisms may and do, vary widely in response to the changing character of minority irritants and the shifting conditions of the day; but through each separate hostility runs broader cultural antipathies and ethnocentric judgments, nativism translates them into zeal to destroy the enemies of a distinctively American way of life.”

This points to a parallel opposite; a powerful strand of thought which has always figured in the American psyche: the welcome for the immigrant as expressed in the famous words adorning the Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Elections offer the chance to restate one of these attitudes and disdain the other. Both stances, however, need reinforcement to work.  In the case of social ‘antagonisms’ the propellant is provided by a certain view of the world and its current characteristics, most clearly spelt out by Mr Trump. Whichever one is chosen, left or right, there is bound to be a widely held zeitgeist whereby alleged adversaries or errors or persistent lies are conjured up and laid bare, and suitable corrective measures identified. 

That in turn requires ‘explanations.’  These are convincingly provided by charismatic leaders and prophets prepared to think the supposedly unthinkable, identify the ‘other’ and smash the way forward, by violence if necessary. History is filled with examples, ranging from the ancient Egyptians to Adolf Hitler and in our own time, say, Pol Pot. These, however, were extremists by any standard; what is worryingly noticeable now is the rise of populist leaders in many ostensibly democratic jurisprudences prepared to advocate illiberal ideas, preach extremist solutions to national crises and, once in power, act accordingly. 

Leaders such as these have at least three characteristics.  The first is that each of them rises to power by deploying a convincing narrative which on the basis of an alleged national crisis attracts millions of voters longing for change. 

The second characteristic is that of the strongman’s subversion of the state through “the long march through the institutions.” (Gramsci) The third is the undeniable fact that the leader carries within him (it is nearly always a man) the seeds of his own destruction.

 This latter supposition is grounded on the fact that the new leader’s regime is almost always inherently unstable.  However successful it may seem in outward appearance the regime cannot prevent the underlying idea on which it is based being eventually subverted in turn.  History shows the fuhrerprinzip cannot survive an alliance-based military invasion, natural catastrophe or the fading of a national idea (such as prohibition or jingoism or nativism).  Sooner or later a crack appears which the regime fails to recognise for what it is and deals with it inappropriately.  “C’est une révolte? Non, Sire, c’est une revolution.”

 

In time, the leader becomes an anachronism, fails to keep pace with the prevailing ethos and falls victim to revolution or military impatience (witness the fall of Ceausescu in 1989).

None of this is supposed to apply to the Land of the Free.  There, there is a cultural assumption that the country will never have to carry out or tolerate any kind of coup or insurrection to redress a national injury.  But that is precisely what nearly happened at the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021.  At least one who took part was quoted as saying that any country had to have a periodic blood-letting and now it was America’s turn. 

It all depends on what Americans think and know about their present situation. If it is sick then it could be that what is needed, especially this year, is a more realist deployment of healing, teaching and optimism.  From what we know about Trumpism we can but hope that something of this will percolate through the whole election process, whatever the underlying national obsession happens to be.

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Maestro Giotto

Now when Giotto was beginning to grow famous, it happened that the Pope was anxious to have the walls of the great Cathedral of St. Peter at Rome decorated. So he sent messengers all over Italy to find out who were the best painters, that he might invite them to come and do the work.

The messengers went from town to town and asked every artist for a specimen of his painting. This was gladly given, for it was counted a great honour to help to make St. Peter’s beautiful.

By and by the messengers came to Giotto and told him their errand. The Pope, they said, wished to see one of his drawings to judge if he was fit for the great work. Giotto, who was always most courteous, ‘took a sheet of paper and a pencil dipped in a red colour, then, resting his elbow on his side, with one turn of the hand, he drew a circle so perfect and exact that it was a marvel to behold.’ ‘Here is your drawing,’ he said to the messenger, with a smile, handing him the drawing.

‘Am I to have nothing more than this?’ asked the man, staring at the red circle in astonishment and disgust.

‘That is enough and to spare,’ answered Giotto. ‘Send it with the rest.’

The messengers thought this must all be a joke.

‘How foolish we shall look if we take only a round O to show his Holiness,’ they said.

But they could get nothing else from Giotto, so they were obliged to be content and to send it with the other drawings, taking care to explain just how it was done.

The Pope and his advisers looked carefully over all the drawings, and, when they came to that round O, they knew that only a master-hand could have made such a perfect circle without the help of a compass. Without a moment’s hesitation they decided that Giotto was the man they wanted, and they at once invited him to come to Rome to decorate the cathedral walls. So when the story was known the people became prouder than ever of their great painter, and the round O of Giotto has become a proverb to this day in Tuscany.

‘Round as the O of Giotto, d’ ye see;
Which means as well done as a thing can be.’

From Amy Stedman Knights of art

Mr Collins

Someone told me, years ago, that a girl we both knew had compared me to Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice.  Of course I vehemently denied this, pointing out that I was nothing like the pompous fearful clergyman so well described by Jane Austen.  But of course I was.  I just didn’t realise how came across to people. I’ve spent a lifetime discovering and rectifying this; though not of course unaware that others are similarly affected: in the words of Robert Burns, “O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!” Or, in modern English, “Oh would some Power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us.” (Mark Sherman in Psychology Today 04/12/2013). But I still wince when I hear Mr Collins’ attempts to speak normal human.

A dying fall

Something bad happens to the Mountbatten-Windsor dynasty whenever one of its senior figures goes one-to-one in front of the cameras, or a book.  The king, his ex-wife, both of his brothers and now his second son have all found themselves roasted by the media. The accession of Charles III and the publication of Prince Harry’s autobiography have shone an inescapable spotlight on the monarchy.  This is being accentuated by the torrent of news and gossip which our culture now demands like so much coal needed to feed a furnace. 

It is a stance which skews the balance between the important and the trivial.  It also takes no notice of the distinction to be drawn between the throne and the royal family. This confusion across all media is dangerous. It represents an existential threat, and the royals know it.

It may be too late. It’s got to the stage where the Firm seems to exist only at the behest of the Third Estate, all which, for good or ill, represents us the citizenry (and not just in the UK).  If the major part of our transaction with the institution is gossipy consumption the royals have no alternative but to reciprocate.  So we connive at being granted the privilege of watching and judging an institution that ostensibly depends on us for its very existence.

The first casualty of this loss of traction is meaning. As Bagehot warned what would happen if the monarchy let daylight into its magic: too much exposure and the currency is devalued, so to speak. The very point of the crown is progressively drained away, never to be recovered.  “That strain again – it had a dying fall…” as Shakespeare put it.

It is increasingly clear that the royal family is more and more seduced by the media’s insatiable appetite for gossip.  This has been the case for years but the relevant context features 24/7 social media online which exerts a particular pressure on the palace’s PR assumptions that the media blizzard can somehow be controlled, most immediately by the Sussex’s current litigation against parts of the press.

My own feeling is that the monarchy, and within it the royal family, will like the Church of England wither over time and fade away.   The trend will begin with the Commonwealth whose purpose and achievement have no resonance in the British citizenry.  Next to go, following Barbados, will be Jamaica and then Australia.  That leaves the tiny ocean islands at the mercy of Britain’s aid policy.  Then there will be Dutch-like driftings away by young royals: precisely what the Sussex family is doing already. In this light, Prince Harry’s book is prescient and timely.

Charles II

“May I add another evocative example (Letters, 5 November)? Maurice Bowra, the legendary warden of Wadham College, records in his Memories (1966) meeting an old Wadham man, Frederic Harrison, then aged 92. Harrison had gone to Oxford in 1849 and remembered the accession of Queen Victoria when he was seven years old. As an undergraduate, he had met Dr Routh, long in office as president of Magdalen (and reputedly the last man in Oxford to wear a wig), who died in his hundredth year soon afterwards. Routh in turn had met in his boyhood an old lady who when she was young had seen Charles II exercising his spaniels in Magdalen College gardens.”

President or what?

Charles III’s automatic accession to the British throne at the age of 74 provides ample reason for a re-examination of the claims of republicanism for these islands, one of which can boast of having adopted it unilaterally about a hundred years ago.  So which would be better for Britain from now on: a monarch or a president?  Does it matter?

Almost all of the world’s existing monarchies are functioning democracies.  To these democratic ones – Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco, Spain, Japan and UK– can be added others such as Lesotho, Eswatini, Brunei, Thailand and the Gulf states. 

The rest of the world is divided between republics and special cases.  Some of these cases are what used to be called dominions viz Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as small island dependencies, for whom the head of state is whoever is the current king of England; some special cases are dependencies like French Guiana or Guam, or totally unique like Switzerland or the USA. Yet another is the Holy See.

Some countries such as France have presidents who are both heads of state and heads of government.  In countries where the president is the titular head of state with minimal functions, such as Ireland, Israel, India, Italy and Germany, it is the separate head of government (prime minster) who exercises executive power and responsibility. 

This important distinction is sometimes lost on voters whenever they are being asked whether they want a republican constitution or a monarchical one.  Those voting for a republic had better do so in the knowledge that the proposed post of president might be filled either by a retired political hack promoted as national symbol or by a powerful chief executive politician with an activist agenda. Those voters in a plebiscite who fail to grasp this distinction risk letting the monarchical model ‘come through’ and win by default.

The present monarchical model covers a number of states and territories, all that remains from the colonial era, ranging from the great dominions such as Canada (population 38.25m) down to Tristan da Cunha (population 264).  They acknowledge the kingship of whoever is recognised as the current chief descendant of Egbert (died 839) first king of all England, grandfather of Alfred the Great.  Over the course of recent decades this formal acknowledgement has successfully modulated from royalty as the apex of a pyramidal structure of class deference to a narrative of media-fuelled stardom where those who embody the institution do so as members of the Firm under constant ‘democratic’ scrutiny and judgment that knows no limits of nationality, evaluation or taste.

At best, those who are generally supportive of the institution of monarchy see it as the embodiment of national identity, in which they can take unimpeachable pride.  The taste for historical majesty is fortified by carefully arranged ceremonial, ribbon cutting, media coverage and ‘meet the people’ engagement. Thus is the royal brand renewed by continual marketing and retooling, and any lapses expunged.

There have been problems, however, caused by the heir to the throne.  In the 1890s the heir was Prince Albert Victor, who predeceased his father Edward VII after a shortened life beset by innuendo and allegations about his sexuality.  It is likely that he would not have turned out to be an adequate occupant of the imperial throne if contemporary gossip is anything to go by.  His grandson David Prince of Wales succeeded his father George V as King Edward VIII in 1936 but under pressure from the establishment of the time abdicated in less than a year in order to marry a divorced American socialite.  His youngest brother Prince John was an epileptic who died in his teens.  Prince Talal of Jordan succeeded as king in 1951 but was overthrown by parliament a year later after it became clear that he was schizophrenic.  

As for presidencies there are advantages and drawbacks for both the executive and non-executive models.  While it is true that non-executive heads of state are often retired political hacks or just nonentities there are occasional exceptions who are widely admired (eg Mary Robinson, Sandro Pertini, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi). 

They are almost all term-limited.  This means that the end date can be foreseen; the same cannot be said of the holder of a job for life.

In the end, a nation’s head of state, whether presidential or monarchical, embodies in one person the long and contested history of the nation with all that that describes, even geography, conquest and struggle. The accumulated continuity of this history is based on layers of achievement like so many strata banding the surface of a rock outcrop, including the hard-won constitution and its metaphorical guardian, even change of dynasty and the words of the national anthem.  

Ultimately it is whatever the nation state feels more comfortable with that defines the choice of type of head.  King Egbert would have approved.

Walk about in Rome

Rome in the middle of the 1800s: a rich eccentric, Augustus Hare, revels in the city he has made his home

From the experience of many years the writer can truly say that the more intimately these scenes become known, the more deeply they become engraven upon the inmost affections. Rome, as Goethe truly says, “is a world, and it takes years to find oneself at home in it.” It is not a hurried visit to the Coliseum, with guide book and cicerone, which will enable one to drink in the fullness of its beauty; but a long and familiar friendship with its solemn walls, in the ever-varying grandeur of golden sunlight and grey shadow—till, after many days’ companionship, its stones become dear as those of no other building ever can be;—and it is not a rapid inspection of the huge cheerless basilicas and churches, with their gaudy marbles and gilded ceilings and ill-suited monuments, which arouses your sympathy; but the long investigation of their precious fragments of ancient cloister, and sculptured fountain,—of mouldering fresco, and mediæval tomb,—of mosaic-crowned gateway, and palm-shadowed garden;—and the gradually-acquired knowledge of the wondrous story which clings around each of these ancient things, and which tells how each has a motive and meaning entirely unsuspected and unseen by the passing eye.

Grass huts

A dictum from Camille Paglia:

If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.

Appointment

The appointment in Samarra
(as retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933])

The speaker is Death. There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said,

Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me.  She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate.  I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. 

The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. 

Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?  That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise.  I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.