Hello and welcome!
I am fresh from a dark night on a beach with stiff winds and intermittent drizzle that is simply for this soul, delicious! As I cast my Spells for peace I got a text from my beloved, who at that moment was sharing the peace in a Mass she was attending.
Peace is not an abstract concept or quality that I evoke. It is rather in my perceptions and invocations, a choice of how to live. I want to be the peace in my world. The embodiment of peace in my interactions with friends, family, colleagues at work and perfect strangers from across the panoply of cultures and religions and ethnicities. Do I succeed in my aims?
Sadly it looks like, in the big picture of our World, I am a failure. Despite my regular call to peace the world is on a course of a positive proliferation of conflicts. What then? Give up?
No! I continue. It is the commitment that arises from a choice in my will. It is the same with my religion. I am deeply committed and cannot stop.
As my title this week suggests, politics is on my mind this week. I think it worth stating at the start that I am not an American Citizen: so I have no “dog in the hunt” when it comes to USA political parties and the looming Presidential Election of this year. I don't care, so far as my understanding goes, for either the democrat party or republican party. Though it is true that the democrat party, due to its history, I find more problematic. Secondly, Donald Trump I care for even less. He is simply, not my kind of man.
I have wit enough to see why some do find his brand of politics interesting without seeing any need to brand them as ‘deplorables’, nazis, fascists. Even so, I am not convinced he espouses conservative principles at all and if I were a republican, I would be totally estranged at the moment.
Having said that, I find the current democrat President to be little more that a slightly more active Woodrow Wilson of 1920. I pity the American citizens whose choice it seems this year is to re-run the election of 2020 between a charismatic shister on the one hand and a corrupt cabbage on the other. They say that in a democracy you get the representatives you deserve. USA is then going to hell on a handcart!
However these are just personal views and feelings on my part and not really worthy of our fantastic readership here on this SubStack whose own thoughts may well be far more interesting. If so, please comment and illumine us further!
What got me thinking a bit more systematically was a segment on NBC. A rather innocuous segment on its own perhaps. What struck me after watching it was this: has this been the strategy of the democratic party in the run up to 2024 i.e. to get republicans to rally behind Trump? If it is, has it worked? Will it deliver a second victory for a democrat candidate?
In brief, a year ago in 2023 Ron De Santis, Republican Governor of the State of Florida looked like a serious challenger to Donald Trump. Yet that is not the 2024 that democrat strategists wanted. They need Donald Trump. Why? Because they fundamentally believe that i) They can beat him ii) Trump can be made so unpalatable and so odious to most voters.
Not to his die hard base but certainly to that large segment of voters who are independents, the uncommitted or even the so called group of ‘never trumpers’ within the republican party itself. Let alone the democrat voters who just in case they have forgotten, may need reminding of this Adolf Hitler ante-type who requires them to come out and vote in opposition to that.
As Steve Kornaki highlights on the graphic: something changed. Indictments, legal cases. Not one or two here and there: but four or more of varying degrees of seriousness at both State level and Federal Level. My question after watching Kornaki is why then?
Trumps ratings have once again taken off. His oppositional candidates for nomination have, as I write after last weeks Iowa caucus, all but folded. He is, as of this weekend for good or ill, the presumptive republican nominee. If I was a democrat I actually do believe I would be happy with this result for the republicans have done what I expected: rallied to their man and not to policies nor a political platform. The very man I want to face off against. Do republicans have strategists?
Not to question per se the legal terms (cases take time, we all know that). I question the political terms. Two options come to my mind: firstly that the strategy was specifically designed to activate republican sympathies towards their man and away from Ron de Santis (or others). Thus delivering a Trump nomination.
Secondly this may well deliver a Donald Trump, in one or two cases, in an orange jump suit and behind bars come the Summer or Autumn of this year. He is not just going to be beaten but preferably crushed. Humiliated. A proven criminal. Who in their right mind would still vote for such? Who wants that kind of America?
Of course as I stated at the beginning, I am not an expert here. Yet I think I can confidently assert something about the Presidential campaign that will be ongoing in 2024 up until the November Election. It will be the most divisive that anyone has as of yet ever seen. Now that the democrats have got their man in place in the republican party: I thoroughly expect the next 9 months to be a thorough demolition of Trump as a politician, as a man, as a human being. I also expect the demolition of his supporters to be as virulent and to run side by side. In real Judicial Courts. In the courts of public opinion.
I also expect that policies, will hardly be spoken about. How will this play with the American people? I have no idea.
In Britain, it is a national and almost pathological trait to favour the under dog. As you can tell, I am watching with interest. The American Hegemony is over. I am watching how America settles into a newer multi lateral, multi polar World. At the moment it seems more intent upon destroying itself. I was reminded of the ballad of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar and Abdul Abul Bul Amir. Who in the end: Destroy each other thoroughly. Watch and enjoy some light relief!
Democratic party and republican party seem like that to me. Time for a JFK?
The other great powers, will be loving this I am sure. Britain is also having a General Election this year. It is utterly bland in comparison!
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