Eleven years ago today I launched this blog with a posting about the cultural differences between England and America. Back then George Bush was President, Barack Obama was an ambitious Senator, Donald Trump was hosting Season 5 of The Apprentice, and Alistair Cooke would be broadcasting his Letter from America on the BBC for another eight years. It was on April 27, 1990 that Cooke made an offhand, but eerily prophetic, statement:

Throughout the 1980’s, the non-fiction lists were headed by the autobiographies of self-made men, by titans like Lee Iacocca, the phoenix of the automobile, by Donald Trump, the young, bouncy, blond tycoon whose aspirations to take over hotels, casinos, airlines, resorts, cities — why not the country? — appear to be boundless.
(Letter from America, 1946-2004, p. 339)

Cooke did not live to see the day.

Of the people, by the people

I wonder what that cultured Englishman, who was an outstanding observer of America throughout his career, would make of President Trump? No doubt he would have commented on Trump’s obvious eccentricities as a sui generis political phenomenon. He would also, I’m sure, have visited the red states to talk to some of the 63 million who voted for him. As the French philosopher said “In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.” And the people have spoken, there’s a new sheriff in town.

What the millions wanted was a change. And change is what we’ve got. They expressed a forceful desire to ‘Make America Great Again’ (now a Twitter hashtag #MAGA). Trump reflects these desires. He mirrors them.

Mirror, mirror

I can remember back around the millennium being in the audience at an avant garde theatrical performance where a series of photographs were projected onscreen, accompanied by loud music. Meanwhile, elegantly dressed young women walked around in the audience holding large mirrors that reflected us, watching the screen, back to ourselves. When a woman happened to stand both behind and in front, then , like in the barbers chair, an infinite series of images of the audience cascaded around us, simultaneously distracting from, and supplementing, the images on the screen we were reacting to. The light from the mirrors illuminated the audience, brighter than the screen was illuminated by the projector. We reacted to reflections of the reality we’d come to see. Watching ourselves watching. Like Narcissus at the pond, we were entranced by our own reflection.

Just so, Trump has taken the image voters have of themselves — channeling their anger and frustration with established politicians — and superimposed it onto the political process. He has ridden their waves of their frustration from the Rust Belt to the Beltway. And he has illuminated politics with the re-tweets of his 20 million Twitter followers.

He assumes the voice of ‘the people’, claiming to speak for them, as only a billionaire on his third marriage can.

He reflects the Americans who are about to get the President they deserve. His supporters are illuminated and emboldened by the reflected glory of his success.

As time goes by, following his Inauguration on Friday January 20, this light might fade, or, heaven forbid, it might shine brighter than a thousand suns.

A Distant Mirror

Some have compared the rise of Trump to other demagogues such as Hitler and Mussolini. Others see parallels in the transition of the Roman Republic to an Empire.

Historian Barbara Tuchman has written a compelling narrative of the 14th century that highlights how, in a time of chaos and pestilence, rulers found opportunities to accumulate wealth and power, enjoying an opulent life while ruthlessly exploiting the peasants. They had their 1% back then. Other periods of human history are distant mirrors to our own.

Thing is, they did not have the nuclear codes.

Now in my 8th week of fasting from the daily news (for reasons I explained back in October) I’m nevertheless fascinated by the stories I hear people around me discussing (many of which seem to involve the surprise election of a New York property developer). It’s obvious that most of my family and friends are caught up in the drama that is played out 7×24 on multiple channels.

Here’s a great infographic courtesy of Jeff Herrington that David Murray posted to his awesome Writing Boots blog that helps make sense of the available options.

The one world-class news source he omits is the Financial Times which I would place firmly in the top ellipse on the ‘Mainstream: minimal partisan bias’ axis — or perhaps ever so slightly to the liberal side (at least when compared to the WSJ which in my opinion skews further to the right than this graphic shows).

Click to enlarge..

Half asleep on the evening ferry after a long day at work, half listening to a podcast of a recent episode of Start the Week, I was startled awake by a remarkable poem:

In Wales, wanting to be Italian

(from Over the Moon, by Imtiaz Dharker)

Is there a name for that thing
you do when you are young?
There must be a word for it in some language,
probably German, or if not just
asking to be made up, something like
Fremdlandischgehörenlust or perhaps
Einzumandererslandgehörenwunsch.

What is it called, living in Glasgow,
dying to be French, dying to shrug and pout
and make yourself understood
without saying a word?

Have you ever felt like that, being
in Bombay, wanting to declare,
like Freddy Mercury, that you are
from somewhere like Zanzibar?

What is it called? Being sixteen
in Wales, longing to be Italian,
to be able to say aloud,
without embarrassment, Bella! Bella!
lounge by a Vespa with a cigarette
hanging out of your mouth, and wear
impossibly pointed shoes?

I knew that truth in my own life, back when I was sixteen and looking for a way to shake the dust of Crewe off my heels, sitting on the back of my friends’ Vespa’s, looking for a way out. Which came for some of us, didn’t it? When we went off to Universities (even ones in Wales), and on to other places in the world than that dirty old town, where we’d met our love, by the gasworks wall n’all.

In a wide-ranging interview on Fresh Air, late night TV host Trevor Noah comments on the appeal of Donald Trump, specifically the language he uses. This is worth quoting at length since it confirms what Bob Lehrman writes about, Kate Peters advises, and I’ve observed about Trump’s rhetoric:

I came to realize the power and the importance of language.

It’s more than just language and the way we perceive it. If you look at this election, I feel like Donald Trump was speaking a different language to Hillary Clinton. Y’know it’s not dissimilar to what we saw in South Africa with our president Jacob Zuma.

I remember sitting with people laughing when they would watch the debates, and they’d go “This guys a buffoon. Oh man, he has such a low word count, he’s got the grammar of a five-year-old, the vocabulary of a toddler.” And I said, “Yeah, but do you know how many people find that appealing right now? He’s up there and everyone understands what he’s saying.” Like: “Can you imagine this guy as a President?”

And I said, “Yeah, but think of how many people who, for the first time, are listening to a Presidential candidate and understanding every single quote and policy that he puts forward?” And sometimes that’s a thing that, I will call the elites, not even liberal elites, just people who are educated, forget sometimes.

Communication is more important than your grasp of language.

Can you communicate effectively as a person?
.
.
You’ve got to be careful in deciding what your intention is. Are you using language as a flourish or are you trying to communicate effectively as possible with another human being? And that’s what Donald Trump, in my opinion, did very, very well.

Truth is: Trump’s communication style resonates with many Americans.

I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. – Acts 2:19

While I’m not a superstitious type I looked out of my window as the sun rose this morning and, lo, to the east their appeared a wondrous sight:

I’m no prophet…but a thought did occur to me:

However, this Thursday I’ll be gathering with friends and family to give thanks for what Is, not what might be:

They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts… Acts 2:46

While there are many Toastmasters and National Speakers Association members who speak for fun and profit, none can touch the stellar earnings that retired (but not retiring) politicians can rake in at the podium.

As I reported back in 2008, ex-President Clinton (well, I suppose there’s still only one, so no need to clarify like there is with the confusing Bush, Snr and Bush, Jnr) earned beaucoup bucks from the podium.

Now the UK Independent newspaper is shocked, shocked! to hear that ex-PM Cameron (no need to clarify, unlike Pitt the Elder and Pitt the Younger) earns £2,000 per minute speaking about the defining issue of his premiership: the Brexit vote. They note that

While Prime Minister, Mr Cameron earnt £143,462 per year, the standard salary for the role.

Now he’s no longer forced to slum it in Number 10 he can jet around the world in Tony Blair’s footsteps, who knows how to earn a few bob post-Westminster.

Of course, career politicians of this ilk can cash in giving an hour speech here and there, while lesser ones must make money the old fashioned way, as lobbyists and board members.

There’s a shockingly misinformed review of the new San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the Weekend FT. The article, Westward, look, the land is bright (the title taken from a line in an an obscure 19th century poem) is written by the cosmopolitan architect Thomas Sevcik. While I can’t comment on his claims about the overall quality of the art on display in the new museum, or quibble with the cultural shift to the West Coast from the East in the U.S., there’s no way to overlook the ridiculousness of four of his ideas.

The end of art fairs

Sevcik anticipates the time when  ‘the West Coast-driven digitalisation of the art market makes art fairs obsolete’. Despite initiatives such as the Google Art Project, to properly appreciate art you still have to be able to eyeball it up close. Buyers and sellers like to sip wine and be seduced by expensive art in a face-to-face setting. Despite the success of Amazon, people still attend the Franfurt Book Fair and flock to Hay-on-Wye. A couple of years back, Jan Dalley wrote in the FT on the paradox of performance: despite digialization people still like to meet in person.

You need a humanities education to collect art

Central to Sevcik’s article is the power of money to influence art. The fact that the highlights of SFMOMA were gifted by the founders of the Gap clothing stores is consigned to a sidebar. Sevcik wonders if the titans of tech will buy art, in contrast to the East Coast plutocracy that included bankers who ‘collected art because many of them had a humanities education’. Perhaps these guys did take a few art history classes on their way to economics, finance and accounting degrees. But that does not mean everyone with a tech fortune studies nothing by computer science in college. Steve Jobs famously audited calligraphy classes at Reed College. Many of the most successful (Ellison, Zuckerberg, Gates) never actually finished college. When not collecting racing yachts Oracle’s Larry Ellison has an appreciation for Japanese art and culture.

The media is based in LA

Throughout the article, Sevcik conflates Los Angles, San Francisco and Seattle. At times he talks about the “West Coast” as a whole. Then he gets it spectacularly wrong on LA:

Most of the TV series we like so much, and virtually all globally relevant movies, are invented, written, developed and managed in Los Angeles.

Don’t tell this to Woody Allen or the Coen Brothers, the people of Michigan or Louisiana. Indeed, it’s been noted that Hollywood continues to flee California at an alarming rate.

We’re all about to become polygamists

OK, up to now the article has made some points that can be argued either way (maybe a majority of media does originate in LA; perhaps, given their wealth, tech titans don’t invest in as much art as others; and Bill Gates’ Seattle mansion does have digitized art on display) but in assessing the current ‘West Coast lifestyle’ Sevcik goes completely off the rails:

New West Coast lifestyle ideas, from questions about robots, cyborgs and space travel, to the legalization of polygamy (soon to come?)…

Say what?

I can only suspect this is either a wishful Freudian slip on the part of the author, or a typo on the part of an FT editor smoking the substance whose legalization might soon come but has nothing to do with outdated Mormon marriage practices.

You’re everywhere and nowhere baby, that’s where you’re at
Going down a bumpy hillside, in your hippy hat
Flying across the country, and getting fat
Saying everything is groovy, when your tires are flat
– Jeff Beck, Hi Ho Silver Lining

I recently flew across the country on a business trip to Boston, the place where I spent my first two years in America. Revisiting old haunts in Somerville and Cambridge I found some familiar places that were mostly unchanged (Harvard Yard, the newsstand, the Coop) mixed together with a gentrified Inman Square and a booming Bean Town where, as in San Francisco, rising property prices are impacting traditional blue collar neighborhoods.

Since living in Boston I’ve called Portland Oregon, Bristol, Minneapolis and the San Francisco Bay Area home. Beforehand, I’d lived in Crewe and Leicester in the UK. All that moving around has left me with a distinct lack of a ‘sense of the continuing stories of a corner of the world and feeling absorbed into the pattern’ that comes from being rooted in one place as landscape architect Kim Wilkie writes in the Weekend FT.

Wilkie contrasts Voltaire’s recommendation to “cultivate our garden” in his satirical novel Candide (apparently banned in Boston as late as 1929, if Wikipedia is to be believed!) with the rootlessness of modern life:

One of the more disconcerting advertisements I have seen recently is the Airbnb poster with the banner line “Belong Anywhere” — or perhaps belong nowhere? There is a beguiling freedom to anonymous movement. It allows you to develop individual identity and escape the preconceptions of your childhood. But at what point does freedom become rootlessness and alienation? Perhaps wandering is ideally just for teenagers, especially if you can choose which part of your life to spend as the teenage years.

Since it was partly reading Kerouac’s On The Road that made me originally want to explore America I can hardly complain. I certainly don’t feel alienated here in California where it’s more common to meet fellow immigrants than native sons.

Wilkie debates whether it’s best to cultivate a garden, or just accept that ‘many of us remain teenagers until we die’ and go with the flow. Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss would no doubt agree with Jeff Beck that everything is groovy despite life’s occasional flat tires.

I’ve written before of the unlikely content carried by the Weekend Financial Times as well as the vivid prose that is found in the pink pages.

This weekend’s newspaper was a fascinating read. It contains a delightfully random mix of information you’ll find nowhere else:

• A series of articles in the House & Home section nestled between ads for $23 million New York apartments. These give details of remodeling projects undertaken by members of the newspaper’s staff including the story of a 13-year-long tussle with bureaucrats in Spain to obtain permission to convert a farmhouse into a holiday home. This is followed by a correspondent’s humble upgrade to a garden greenhouse with broken glass panes. Other reports cover remodeling projects in Jakarta, Mozambique, Egypt and South Wales.
• A prize-winning first-person report from a Bolivian navel base — 2,000km from the ocean — maintained by that landlocked nation (one of nine countries with no coastline that maintain navies).
• The need for certain huskies on dog-sled teams in Arctic Norway to wear special jackets if they don’t have ‘sufficiently hairy testicles’ to combat the cold.
• The fact that the average German today owns 10,000 objects, the average British household owns around £4,000 worth of clothes and 6-8% of US adults suffer from compulsive buying disorder or ‘oniomania’.
• In 2002 a third of all employees in Japan lived in corporate housing.
• A new book retells the story of The Merchant of Venice in the contemporary setting of Cheshire, my home county in England.
• An airport is set to open on remote island of St. Helena which contains ‘the world’s most isolated hospital, police station, prison, distillery, cathedral and cricket ground.’
• The ‘hipster economy’ includes a taste for craft beers, flat whites and beard balm. But there’s no mention of kombucha — surely the hippest of hipster beverages?

Re-reading the wonderful historical novel on the life of Cicero by author Robert Harris – Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome that I last enjoyed back in 2010 I was struck by this quote on the effort Cicero expended when he was preparing a speech (p. 83):

No one can really claim to know politics properly until he has stayed up all night writing a speech for delivery the following day. While the world sleeps, the orator paces by lamplight, wondering what madness ever brought him to this occupation in the first place. Arguments are prepared and discarded. The exhausted mind ceases to have any coherent grip upon the purpose of the enterprise, so that often — usually an hour or two after midnight — there comes a point where failing to turn up, feigning illness, and hiding at home seems the only realistic options. And then, somehow, just as panic and humiliation beckon, the parts cohere, and there it is: a speech. A second-rate orator now retires gratefully to bed. A Cicero stays up and commits it to memory.