Just for tonight….

This blog is time limited. By the time you get round to reading it, it may well not be worth reading (if it ever is). I have been inspired to write it by three coinciding occurrences. The first is the noise outside my study window. It is the evening of the 5^th November, and Scousers really, really, like their fireworks. So, this time of year (and actually over several days), all the bangs, booms and whistles mean that it sounds like warfare has broken out. It hasn’t of course. Note that this is in no way to minimise the experience of those elsewhere on this continent who tonight will attempt to go to sleep knowing that what they are hearing nearby is the sound of actual war. Fortunately for us the noise is a reminder of violent times mercifully far in the past, not the sound of ongoing hostilities. There was a time when a subset of a subset of a disaffected political and religious minority attempted to blow up our Parliament. The issues were settled, or at least became less resonant, a long time ago. Now November 5^th is just an excuse to let off fireworks and build bonfires. In comparison with those former times the political issues that divide us now are relatively trivial. Politics still has its plots, but they don’t involve gunpowder and nobody dies. I for one am grateful; I’m assuming none of us would want to go back.

Meantime, on the other side of the Atlantic, US citizens (or at least a sizeable proportion of them) are carrying out that most basic of democratic obligations, to vote in an election for those who will hold power and make and unmake laws. Unusually at the moment no-one knows what the outcome will be. The opinion polls in the critical states have been statistically tied for weeks. Just like the system of elections here, US system, while imperfect, is basically sound. Everyone knows (or at least could know if they paid attention in the civics classes they have to take in school) how the system works. If someone thinks a rule has been broken, or a shortcut taken, if they think that their side has been egregiously disadvantaged, then they have one of the most active legal systems in the world where issues can be aired and examined. For every presidential election (and for many others) both major parties in the US stand up large numbers of lawyers and observers, and complaints and legal action can mean the campaign continues long after the last vote is cast. But usually the issues are settled, a winner emerges, and life moves on. That is until recently.

I have no vote in this particular election. I am an observer from afar. Like many Brits, I have a real liking for the US. But in last the few months we have seen the return of the great narcissist who has managed to appeal to a sizeable minority who feel they have no stake in the “system” as it is. Together they have constructed their own reality and sealed it off from any semblance of the “real” world. Admittedly cause and effect are difficult to discern in this context. And of course the idea that there is a real world has been hotly disputed for a considerable period of time. But a relatively new, popular form of social-media stoked nihilism has allowed one Donald J. Trump to compete for, an occasionally attain, political power. He talks to minority and “for” them. He has no liking for the “system” (“them”, “the deep state”) and claims that “it” knows this and has targetted and persecuted him. He claimed that he won last time out in 2020 but “it” stole the election from him. His supporters believed him then and do so now. When the issues were actually investigated (and there were issues) it quickly become clear that “the great steal” was a fiction. In court after court, when legitimate legal means were used to claim and highlight important irregularities, they mysteriously disappeared. He then famously use illegitimate (and potentially illegal) means to orchestrate a riot during the certification of the election result in Congress, a riot which ended up costing lives. The various constitutional mechanisms prevailed and Biden won, Trump lost. His actions around January 6^th 2021 continue to be the subject of legal action (which he will no doubt put a stop to if elected). Over the last four years he has suffered other legal setbacks including being found in a civil action to be a sexual harasser (we already knew from his own lips that he was a misogynist), and being found guilty of violating New York State campaign finance law, with other cases pending or at earlier stages. Yet by their votes his loyal supporters, who think this is all evidence of persecution, might well provide him again with the attention, position and prestige that he craves. Let us hope they only seek to do this with their votes. If again Trump loses narrowly (Biden’s win in 2020 was far from a ringing endorsement of his policies), it will not take many of his more intemperate followers, perhaps again roiled up by the type of wild accusations that are currently appearing on his social media accounts as I type, to cause real difficulty. Here in the UK we navigated a peaceful transition of power earlier in the summer (reflected on here). Our politics has by and large banished violence to the very fringes to the extent that it hardly figures at all at a national level. We can but wish the same for our US friends. In a few hours we will find out.

And just as all this was going on, one of our TV networks made the West Wing available for streaming again. I have made no secret in the past about being a fan. In Episode 3 Toby Zeigler is to be found complaining about a lack of basic decency in politics. If only he knew. The odd thing is that many of the views held by the snappy talkers in the Bartlett West Wing are actually not particularly in tune with my own. This fictional administration was probably well to the “progressive” left of my own thinking. But then they were all decent, humane and reasonably competent. And the man at the top had a moral compass that pointed in an acceptable general direction. As golden ages go, it was civilised, witty and… golden. It was fiction of course. In the real world (that again) there has never been a golden age and if we ever get to the sunlit uplands we’ll claim we’re greatly disappointed. Or at least that’s what a sizeable proportion of us will say because we’ll have found other things to moan about.

Aha! The fireworks are all but silent. Hopefully all will also be (relatively) calm on the other side of the Atlantic. Not long now.

Life in the Pandemic XIV: The fictional and the fake……

I freely admit it. I’m a fan of Sorkin snappy dialogue. Aaron Sorkin is the screenwriter behind films like “A Few Good Men”, “Charlie Wilson’s War”, “Moneyball” and “The Social Network”. And I’ve just started re-watching his classic TV political drama “The West Wing”. This used to be my treat when I had to travel to conferences far away. Those were the days when we climbed into things called aeroplanes and flew thousands of miles just to give tiny little ten-minute talks and listen to lots of other little ten-minute talks. Those were the days when we felt blessed if our laptops had things called CD drives (or slightly later DVD drives) into which we placed discs containing films or TV series. While this meant that the laptop weighed about the same as a sack of potatoes, it provided a means of whiling away hours at airports, on flights or during evenings spent in mid-budget hotel rooms. So, spread over a couple of years I watched my way through the seven series of The West Wing in the mid to late naughties. 

It centred on the goings on in the West Wing of the Whitehouse during the two terms of the fictional Bartlet presidency. The main protagonists were the smart, witty, morally-superior and, of course, left-leaning senior staff that surrounded the President. President Bartlet himself was of course a Democrat, and was a (fairly conscientious) Roman Catholic and ex-academic economist turned Governor of New Hampshire. The interplay between the President and his communications directors (Toby), or between Josh and the press secretary CJ, or between the President’s “body man” Charlie and Sam the speech-writer, or between any and all of them was a rollercoaster ride of wit and apparent, knowing wisdom. It could be a bit preachy at times, but occasionally dealt with serious subjects and there was the odd tear-jerking moment.  Despite the fact that I had very little in common with any of these characters, and that even the political system they worked within was (by definition) foreign to me, I was hooked within an episode. And even although US evangelicals (and by extension all of us, because we’re obviously a single monolithic block) got a good kicking in about episode 3 of series 1, I stayed hooked right to the very end as the Bartlet presidency came to its natural and inescapable end with the transition to a new (Democratic) administration.

The contrast between Barlet’s  fictional Whitehouse and the current Trump Whitehouse is fairly stark. In the fictional version, there was frequently chaos, but you always new that the chaos was more apparent than real and that things would probably work out. Everyone on the team basically knew what they were doing and why they were doing it. So there was a basic competence that ran deep, even if on the surface there was just a lot of running around going on. And at the top, Bartlet always led in roughly the right direction. Even when he had to agonise over difficult choices, he would think it through, within a broadly recognisable moral framework, and provide the lead that everyone else needed. Occasionally, because he was a politician, he dissembled, and wasn’t entirely transparent. There were secrets that were kept, and others that eventually exploded. There were mistakes, but Bartlet (this being fiction) was big enough and self-assured enough to admit them. All the time these were people who were at least trying to be truthful and decent.

For the last four years even the friends of a real, rather than fictional, president of the United States would have to admit that basic decency, empathy and truth have been in short supply. To be fair, Trump has delivered on some of the big promises he made, promises that persuaded less than half of the US voting population to vote for him. High on the list would be a considerably more conservative Supreme Court and a big tax cut. Of course, who knows what the new shape of the court will produce in the long-term, and the tax cut was of little use to the massed ranks of many of his supporters (although it was a big boost to rich Americans and richer corporations). As the 2020 election campaign heads towards its climax, this allows his boosters to counsel that the population of the US should concentrate on what the Donald has done (or at least some of the things he’s done), not who he is. One odd thing is that so much of both what he’s done, and who he is, is so much stranger than fiction. While not a fictional politician, Trump has turned out to be a fake. Fake outsider, fake man of the people, fake deal-maker, fake wall-builder, fake man of faith and Bible lover. Had Sorkin written a script that was anything approaching the last four years and tried to get it made into a film or TV series, he would have been laughed out of town.

I know that the Bartlet Whitehouse was made up. But basic competence and decency really should not be too much to ask. We all understand that hard choices have to be made, often between bad and worse alternatives. This is probably even more the case in the pandemic. But such choices require accurate information, careful thought and broad, civilised discussion, and should be both intelligible and explained (at least in a democracy). Even when disputed, at least a dialogue can ensue, and perhaps things improved for the future. A lack of accurate information is not always the fault of politicians, but a lack of careful thought is unforgivable. We all understand that wrong choices are occasionally made, particularly against a background of incomplete information. Politicians should be able to change course as more information becomes available without the constant chorus of U-turn media political catastrophism. U-turns are sometimes necessary, and if explainable and explained, probably forgivable. But we’ve seen none of this from the Trump Whitehouse, who have scrapped with each other, have exulted in ignorance and even elevated it above competence, and then resorted to complete fantasy. Fantasy that isn’t nearly as compelling or attractive as The West Wing. Leading the charge has been the Donald himself and then he wonders why he’s not loved.

Commenting on the outcome of the 2020 election, Sorkin himself said “I would write the ending where everyone does the right thing. I don’t think Trump will do the right thing, except by accident.” We’ll see shortly.