Trump brings out the worst, in everyone, including myself

One week to go, and the memes and media columns keep coming. There’s an edge on everything written, drawn or spoken in the last week before US election day, an edge as hard as the polls are close. I hear repeatedly, “how can people vote for Trump and his minions? Are they stupid, or mad, or ignorant, or cruel. As I see it, the matter is quite simple. People feel excluded from wealth, influence, and power. They will vote for anyone who mirrors  mirror their anger and tells them what they want to hear. “Drain the swamp” (though we haven’t hard that this time around.) We hear that immigrants are taking our jobs (not that we would work in those fields for those wages). We hear about the rights of the unborn while sending guns and missiles to the Middle to pulverize Gaza.

The McDonalds stunt continues to inspire satirists. If the secret is in the sauce, then the sauce secret must be stolen, to be moved to Mar-a-Lago. On the doorstep of Hallowe’en there is a lot of scary stuff out there: Project 2025 for example. Almost everywhere, immigration and a certain lack of generosity abound; A “woman’s right to choose” almost seems historic right now, except for those whose opposition to such a basic human right is histrionic.

Now, cue the battle of the endorsements. The Washington Post; Los Angeles Times, the New York Times. Trump puts even the might Jeff Bezos off his game, leaving the Post’s humour columnist to make the paper’s choice known. It would be funny were it not so pathetic. A few sane voices remain however, like the Philadelphia Enquirer, a voice from the city of love.

A favourite this week, is Trump’s teleprompters. Originally I thought he simply watched himself in reflective screens; but no, the upraised hands form a Nazi salute; remember Berlin in 1936? — It all seemed to exciting, so communal. Lately, and with increasingly regularity we hear the ”F” word, Fascism. Most of us eschewed the term weeks ago. It has now come front and centre.

Sidney Blumenthal writes in The Guardian (Monday October 28, 2024) “We are witnessing the making of a fascist president in real time”: