Something Thoughtful

 Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him. 

                                                       CARAMEL AND DUMP

For the last few weeks I’ve been annoyed by two irritating people who have dominated our television news and “think pieces” in what pass for newspapers. There’s Caramel and there’s Dump. Both of them wanted to be President of the Divided States. Caramel became a candidate only because her boss, President Joe Burden, was discovered, rather late, to be deep into cognitive decline. It was painful to see him slowly reaching for words when he tried to debate with Dump. And it was twicefully painful to see Burden’s wife Shrill holding a meeting where Shrill pathetically said “He answered all the questions!”… which was patently untrue. Behind Shrill stood Burden not saying anything, incapable of speaking. The Dimmercratic Party went into panic mode and dumped Burden as their candidate. But time was running out before the election. So, without considering who could be the most capable candidate, they quickly chose Burden’s lacklustre vice-president Caramel.

Meanwhile Dump, the Reprehensible Party candidate, was running around talking about illegal immigrants eating pet cats and dogs and mis-order at the border. He had been President of the Divided States before; and the Dimmercratic Party were always ready to remind people of his reluctance to hand over power once his term as president was over. In fact he encouraged his followers to storm the capitol. Dimmercratics also harped on Dump’s lecherous ways – he had consorted with prostitutes and then lied about paying off one of them. A court said he was a felon. Really, his shagging seemed almost as bad as the titantic shagging of the Dimmercratic JFK – but JFK was lucky to live in an era when reporters didn’t delve into president’s private lives. Caramel was ready to say that Dump was a misogynist and also she proclaimed that she was “a woman of colour”. Early in her [relatively brief] campaign, Caramel proclaimed that she was the party of “freedom” and women’s rights which included something called “women’s reproduction rights”. I’m in favour of women reproducing if they want to. But then I realised Caramel really meant abortion. So why didn’t she say so? Funny that.

Anyway, the two campaigns bumbled on. And there were massive rallies on both sides (people of the Divided States love overblown shows). And there were “think pieces” which claimed Dump could win only if there was a massive wave of racism and misogyny. And most of the media backed Caramel. And even in my country – New Zoohouse – I heard a woman saying hysterically that if Dump won it would be the end of democracy. And on the whole our main New Zoohouse television station tended to say nice things about Caramel’s followers and more-or-less condescending things about Dump’s followers.

Then came the election. And Dump won by a country mile. Okay – I know and you know that the Divided States have a weird system called the Electoral College whereby state by state determines who will become president for the whole country. And often there are “battle states”, meaning states that can be coaxed into changing their minds election by election. The result of which is that sometimes a president is elected when the other candidate won more votes nationwide, that is, the popular vote. [Not that I’m being snooty about this – until some years ago, New Zoohouse used to have a similar system called First Past the Post and a number of times a prime minister came to power without having won the popular vote.]

But the fact is that Dump this time won both the Electoral College AND the popular vote. To put it more simply, over half of the Divided States voted for Dump. Is it possible that all those who voted for Dump were racist and misogynist? Obviously not. Not only did many tens of thousands of women vote for Dump, not only did many tens of thousands of people of many ethnicities vote for Dump, but people were concerned about rising prices for food, an uncontrolled border, and a rookie candidate who was clearly out of her depth. So Dump has become – or will become - only the second president to serve two non-contiguous terms [the first was Grover Cleveland in the late 19^th century].

All of which may lead you to think that I’m being partisan and “voting” for Dump. Not a bit of it. I’m going with Mercutio’s immortal “A plague on both your houses”.

The main problems with Dump as seen by a New Zoohouser are this -  Dump is essentially an isolationist, interested only with what benefits the Divided States. Therefore he’s prone to say that he might withdraw help for NATO if the countries of NATO don’t pay their way. This means opening the way for a real autocrat, like Vladimir Putin, to push his intended empire further and further west. There is suspicion about how Dump has dealt already with Putin. And clearly Dump wants to withdraw any help to beleaguered Ukraine. Then there is Dump’s determination to boost his economy by declaring tariffs on incoming goods. For a New Zoohouser, this could mean a huge loss of income – or no income at all.

And what of Caramel and her followers? Their cardinal fault is their smugness. Dimmercratics embrace fashionable causes and like to present themselves as being interested in the poor and deprived. They like to see the leaders of the Reprehensible Party as made up of billionaires and corporations. Now it’s true that Dump and his friend Elon Musk are billionaires… but so are the leaders of the Dimmercratics. In fact there are probably more billionaires on the Dimmercratic side than the Reprehensible. Dimmercratics look down on the lower classes. Dump’s followers were labelled “deplorables” by an earlier unsuccessful Dimmercratic candidate. Joe Burden called Dump’s followers “garbage”. Night-time satire TV depicted Dump’s followers as yokels, dimwits, bigots, uncouthed etc. etc. This is not exactly a way to woo most of the electorate. The working classes rebelled… and they were not placated at all by movie stars and pop-singers who endorsed Caramel in her rallies - George Loony, Taylor Schitt, Bruce Springroll, Robert de Nightpot etc. etc.  By this stage, working classes understood that such “celebrities” were themselves pampered billionaires who live lives far from hard toil. Personally I believe the more entertainers appear at political rallies, the less likely they are going to persuade the electorate.

FOOTNOTE : So you think I was going hard on the Dimmdercratics? Please pause a moment and remember that it was the very left-wing Bernie Sanders who said "The Democrat Party left the working class so the working class left the Democrat Party." Yep. True.