Donald Trump is the worst president the United States has ever had - a lying, bigoted bully, a racist, a serial abuser of women, a many times failed businessman, a vulgarian who has diminished the international stature of the United States, a man with no sense of shame for the crude and offensive things he has said and done.
And now we have delightful prospect of his niece, Mary Trump’s soon to be published account of the Trump family, Too Much and Never Enough; How My Family Created the World’s most Dangerous Man.
Trump’s pronouncements make Alive in Wonderland sound sensible – such as, the reason cases of covid are growing is because of testing; to make things better, stop testing. Or the almost casual racism calling Covid, kung flu.
In 1964, historian Richard Hofstadter wrote an essay in Harper’s Magazine called “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”. Notoriously, in 2016, this found expression in the accusation that Hillary Clinton and her allies were criminals who ought to be indicted and brought to trial. Despite the fact that she won the popular vote, Trump persists in accusing her of depending on massive vote fraud.
A tactic he is certain to employ this time if he loses to Biden in a close race. Concern is growing in many circles that he might not accept that he has lost and refuse to vacate the White House. Tanks on the White House lawn, perhaps?
Hofstadter describes the paranoid style as made up of certain preoccupations and fantasies: the megalomaniac view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted, yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers to the adversary. and the latest conspiracy theory group supporting him is just what we might expect: The Q Anon movement.
Followers of the Q Anon movement believe in wild conspiracy theories about US President Donald Trump. For example - Q Anon is based upon the idea that there is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshiping paedophiles who rule the world, essentially, and they control everything - politicians, and the media. And they would have continued ruling the world, were it not for the election of President Donald Trump. And Donald Trump knows all about this evil cabals wrong-doing. And one of the reasons that Donald Trump was elected was to put an end to them, basically. George Soros, who happens to be Jewish financier is a prime hate figure.
And we would be ignorant of this behind-the-scenes battle of Donald Trump and the evil cabal — were it not for Q. So who is Q? It is widely believed he is a top government insider, working with a host of similarly-minded patriots. Q is basically a right-wing Deep throat who reveals details about this secret behind-the-scenes battle, and also secrets about what the cabal is doing and also the mass sort of upcoming arrest events through these posts.
In November 2017 Q had predicted that John Podesta, the chair of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, would be arrested and that the military would take control, followed by riots being orchestrated to prevent more senior officials from also being arrested.
Why would anyone believe such nonsense? Hofstader argued in his essay that the white working class right wing of both parties feels dispossessed, that the country the grew up in has been largely taken away from him by liberal elitists who control the Media, and they’re mad as hell, and are determined to take it back again, by fair means or foul..
The Q adherent is always manning the barricades of civilization As one of the enlightened who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, Q is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil, he must be totally eliminated.
The Q Anon movement has attached itself to the sense of persecution felt not only by supporters of President Trump but often voiced by the president himself, and while the president has not directly embraced Q Anon, he has actively furthered the narrative that there are traitorous forces within the government and the Democratic party. Hence all his burbling about the so-called Deep State, which really runs the country and the world.
Barnaby ffrench
