Kooks

I think of some of those amazing guys with the quiffs − the ones who spoke on the radio and on TV − whose Adam’s apples protruded as they defended the unstable morality embodied in Donald Trump. These were the men who could usually be found in frenzied discussions, generally on the extreme right. These are the new embodiments of the aesthetic of old-school fascism whose strategies defend their small personal miseries. Now, those same men are asking us to refrain from judgment until we “wait and see.” They’re asking for a respect that they’ve never shown, since they’ve always shouted out against any contrary idea or theory. Well, now we’ve waited and seen. Trump is childish, monstrous, dangerous and embarrassing.

But these qualities don’t stop with him. He has a propensity to surround himself with people like him. Dodgy people of unscrupulous bent who deal solely in threats, bubble gum patriotism, and Twitter insults where reasoning is impossible (thus its influence). Firing Scaramucci as the White House communications director, 10 days after naming him, is just one in a long chain of this president’s week-and-a-half “rapid-firings.” What’s most alarming, though, isn’t the firing; it’s the mental processes that went into hiring Scaramucci in the first place. It is frightening.

In order to elect Trump as president, a country must be truly degenerating. It has to arrive at a level of fatigue similar to what we experience in Spain as we watch the circus of Catalonian independence. I think this comparison might fall short … But the point is that those who are making the most noise in politics and media are angry men looking for a fight. It’s tiring. It’s a waste of time. It’s depraved.

We keep hearing discourses from Trump that are way beyond their expiration date. So half the world watches as the other half (or however many there are) lives out its untiring clownish farce. There’s a ridiculous caricature of excess in the offices of the idiots in charge. They’ve developed a cancerous politics with speeches made of Barbie-and-Ken plastic. A posse of crooks have taken over the mechanism of democracy, and we have to put up with them full-time because they will occupy the morning news round with their bellowing and braying.

While Catalonia is no longer a serious issue, just ridiculous, Trump’s position has gone beyond dangerous to pathetic. And there are links between a megalomaniac and a much more dangerous person. One truly possible link is a lethal one: ignorance as a spark plug, using force willy-nilly as the last chance at persuasion. Culture tends to be the necessary first-aid kit for not accepting what is broken − although in our present moment it may not be the first line of rebellion. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to stop the current downward slide with the written word. There are too many people resisting intelligence these days. The West has made many advances in many wonderful ways, but with some people over there (in the U.S.) and some crackpots over here (in Europe), we’re on precisely the path to turning ourselves into cockroaches to exterminate. Again.

Scaramucci is Trump without an emergency brake. Puigdemont is the flimsy right arm of the criminal Catalan oligarchy. It’s all a big artifice. Tiring. Different. How expensive one of these kooks is for such a short term. And then they are forgotten.