A word to the stupid, including myself. I started writing this 3 weeks ago and I still haven’t finished, and I don’t think I can. So it is what it is, and if you don’t like it then more fool you for reading past this point.
This will not turn into a rant. A couple of weeks ago we had a little holiday in Portugal. It was much needed but the benefits are now a very small blurry splodge on the horizon behind us. We shared a little B’n’B with some charming Irish legends and one of them even managed to sign up to this blog, which places her in a very, very exclusive club. Well done you!! Anyway, it seems enough people (more than 2) have suggested I write about the American election to warrant actually writing about the American election, not that there’s really a huge amount I can add to the proceedings. But here goes.
This will not turn into a rant. To avoid any confusion this ‘article’ contains known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. So that’s all clear. It’s also very fragmented; more an accumulated ball of repeatedly fingered plasticine than anything else because I’m not sure it works too well and every time I write something about something another news story appears and blurts out something even more extraordinary about this-a-here, a-rootin-tootin, low down yellow-bellied, piccaninny, well I’ll be dammed and go to hell election. And by extraordinary I mean seriously wrong.
This will not turn into a rant. The first thing to remember about the U S of A (God bless America) is that they exist to save the universe. The British Empire felt much the same way 150 years and look how that worked out. America genuinely believes that God created them to lead (rule?) the free world, protect the weak (destroy?) and provide moral guidance to those who have lost their way (rule then destroy?). And might I just say they’re doing a brilliant job of it. I’d sooner have UKIP running the free world but it seems they can barely manage an ice cream van at the moment. Brexit was essentially a dry run for the American elections; nobody thought it would happen, people voted out because they thought it would never happen (which is some seriously twisted logic) and low and behold we woke up next morning a bleaker country. But at least it won’t impact on the future of the whole planet. That we know of.
This will not turn into a rant. So now America has a choice to make itself great again by either staying roughly the same with Little Miss Puckered Sphincter 2016 or placing its future in the hands of an almost entirely shaved, genetically modified guinea pig that has escaped from a cosmetic testing lab. Ahhh, America the brave, America the strong, America the free, oh say can you see…….etc. God bless America for she has a choice to make which has turned into the equivalent of America’s (not) got talent final with Ted Bundy and Al Capone battling it out for who’s the fractionally harder to loathe.
This will not turn into a rant. Everything about the two candidates honks like a dead fisherman’s glove. Hillary is married to the man who mistook his wife for another woman, who mistook his penis for a cigar. I used to like Bill until I read Christopher Hitchens’ book about him and backed off a little. Meanwhile Trump is an unstoppable egomaniac married to a waxwork model (who must enjoy having to cup his little balls every night to keep her in mascara). Personally I couldn’t care less about Hillary’s emails because when was the last time you heard about an honest politicians having power?
This will not turn into a rant. What’s most worrying about the USA is that it can come up with a brace of such unctuous creeps for presidential candidates. My lifelong dream holiday has always been a coast to coast odyssey across the USA. I’m gripped by the mythology that shrouds the ‘Big Country’ but my worry is that the mythology sodded off long ago and now the whole place is just stuffed with air-con units and fast food joints and shit-kicking rednecks with automatic rifles and bible belts creeps with creepy kids and creepier basements and crystal meth pushers of all creeds and colour and people building golf courses in the middle of the desert because ‘God created this country’ and ‘I believe in Jesus and he came to me and whatever he says is well just alright with me I’ll tell ya’. And it puts me off so much that I fear I may never get there to find out I’m wrong or will waste a lot of money just to find out I’m right.
This was supposed to be a balanced assessment on the forthcoming US election but all its ended up as is a big old rant because America shouldn’t be the world police (give me one reason why they should) and why should world balance belong to a country where a good proportion of the electorate believe that if more people had guns then fewer gun crimes would happen. That is the logic of a lost, properly humped, ghost of a democracy; a democracy where you can have whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want and you can go to hell if you thay-nk any different.
Britain may be stained with hard to shift grime but while we aren’t quite sharp enough to realise that leaving the EU would cause more trouble than it solved we at least know who we’d vote for if we lived across the pond. Sit down with a table of strangers and the results are usually the same: you’ll have a few different ideas about the EU and you might disagree about Theresa May; some of you will like Game of Thrones, some could think of nothing worse; a few might defend Tony Blackburn returning to the BBC, many will consider him a big shiny bell-end. But when it comes to the USA the conversation is always the same. Yes, Clinton is a publicity and power hungry witch but when did anyone ever vote for a cunt? He’s got a good chance too. Which is why November is going to be a very scary month.
G B Hewitt. 4.11.2016
As aforementioned, this is a poor effort. If you got this far then have another glass of water/wine/absinthe/crystal meth etc etc.
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 