Thursday, 23 June 2016

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Donald Trump is awful. Just really staggeringly bad in so so many ways. The sheer enormity of his crapness defies belief.

There are plenty of problems with his personality, his policies, his general Trumpiness — Kevin D Williamson is your go-to man for all that stuff:

Donald Trump is unfit for the office. He is unfit for any office, morally and intellectually. ... Donald Trump is not fit to serve as president. He is not fit to serve on the Meade County board of commissioners. He is not fit to be the mayor of Muleshoe, Texas.

— but we needn't even bother looking at the ins and outs of his profound character flaws. For me, just the face he pulls when someone else is talking is enough. It's as if he's been told that politicians are supposed to look like they're listening respectfully and intelligently while other politicians are talking, didn't quite believe it but his handlers insisted he at least give it a try, so bought an instruction book with illustrations done in crayon by a mule and spent nearly two minutes practising in front of a broken mirror while on drugs. How anyone can vote for a man who pulls that face is beyond me.

Yes, Trump is already a disaster for the Republican Party, a disaster for American Conservatism, a disaster for American politics, and, if elected, he'd be a disaster for America.

But here's the thing. I'm not American.

Some of my friends are, and I sympathise, I really do. But those of us outside the US have got to look at the bigger picture. And I can't help but suspect that Trump might be just what the world needs.

Not because any of his foreign policy "ideas" are any better than the unhinged ramblings of a paranoid crackhead, of course, but because he himself is no better than an unhinged rambling paranoid crackhead.

For better or worse, America is the world's policeman, and bad people have been pushing that policeman around of late. People have been getting the idea that they can fuck the world up and America won't react. In fact, people have come to rely on America not reacting. America has become dangerously predictable.

Now, imagine you're a genocidal bastard who wants to take over the world, or maybe just some of it. Now, imagine Donald Trump has access to nuclear weapons. Would you risk it? Maybe he even proclaimed that he was your staunch ally. But so what? Trump says a lot of things, and there's no evidence he believes any of them. The only thing we can say for sure that he really believes is that he should be in charge because he likes throwing his weight around and showing everyone who's boss.

If I were a genocidal bastard, and Trump were President, I'd keep my head down for a while. Best not risk anything too rash.

Here's to eight years of peace. Ish.

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