God Bless America

I know quite a few Americans.

I should maybe qualify that statement: my South American relatives will tell you that they too are Americans but the USA has taken over the word 'American' when what they really are is 'citizens of the United States of America.' Nothing more.

There you are. You might think other people's politics is simple, but as the great French cartoonist Sempé once wrote: Rien n'est simple. Tout se complique.*

On a BBC radio satire programme today I heard Mark Steele suggest that when Donald Trump takes up his job as president of the USA, the Mexicans should build a wall to the south, the Canadians should be asked to build a wall to the north, and the rest of us should chip in to put a roof over it, and close the USA in. For at least four years. Maybe eight. I suspect quite a few Europeans will sympathise with that view. Especially after seeing that press conference.

But I digress. As I said, I know quite a few Americans. Especially on Facebook. They are nothing like Donald Trump. Quite a few of them are first or second generation immigrants to the USA - as Donald Trump's mother was - and they totally endorse the principles of the US Constitution. Since I'm quite left-wing myself (liberal in US terms), I tend to attract friends on Facebook with similar views to mine. I don't block people, unless they're weird - like the guy who seemed to think being liberal was the same as socialist and that was the same as communist. He called me a Putin clone. I didn't know whether to be flattered or shocked, so I blocked him.

My US friends are as horrified as we are in Europe at Trump's misogynistic attitudes towards women; his mocking of the disabled; his contempt for Barack Obama; his refusal to publish his tax returns. Of course, he now denies he's an abuser of women or that he mocked a disabled reporter (even though we all saw it on TV). He's keeping quiet about Obama and the shameful persistent questioning of Obama's birth certificate, but he happily mocks other black US politicians, like the saintly John Lewis. (How the hell can anyone mock this man? A leader in the non-violent tradition, a Freedom Rider - and if you don't know what that means look up his entry in Wikipedia). And Trump is still adamant that not paying taxes - which his fellow citizens have to do, not being able to pay accountants to avoid them - makes him 'smart.'

I've been to the USA a few times. The places I've visited are: New York (hated it), Kentucky (loved it), Tennessee (ditto), Mississippi (ditto), Georgia (ditto) and California (ditto).

I think the USA will survive Trump's term as president. I'm not so sure Trump will survive. As president-elect, everything he has done is a stunt. Eventually, he'll run out of stunts. He'll then be into a new period. In the UK, it's called 'put your money where your mouth is.' We know Trump has a mouth. But is there any more to him than that?


* Nothing's simple. Everything's complicated.