JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: BRITAIN'S NIGEL FARAGE CALLS TRUMP A "GENIUS" FOR TELLING FOUR CONGRESSWOMEN TO "GO HOME" - THAT SAYS A GREAT DEAL ABOUT FARAGE'S ORIGINAL MOTIVES AS LEADER OF BREXIT - XENOPHOBIA - SKILL AND CHARACTER NOTES ON TRUMP, LIKELY THE MOST FAILED AND THE CREEPIEST AMERICAN PRESIDENT EVER - YET THOSE QUALITIES ELICIT SUPPORT FROM A SEGMENT OF A VERY DIVIDED AND HOSTILE AMERICA

John Chuckman


EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT



“Nigel Farage says Trump’s racist attack on Democratic congresswomen was ‘genius’



"Nigel Farage has enthusiastically praised Donald Trump’s “go back” comments, directed at four congresswomen of colour."



Why is Nigel Farage butting into American politics?

Going out of his way to say something flattering about one of the creepiest politicians in American history?

And at a time when Britain has plenty of problems of its own to be dealt with?

I do think that what he praises Trump for tells us a great deal about Farage himself and gives a strong suggestion as to his original motives in heading-up the BREXIT efforts.

Xenophobia, not principles.

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Response to another comment:

It is simply not possible for anyone in full command of his faculties to call Trump “a genius.” And it certainly requires someone with a feeble moral or ethical compass to do so.

There are some American supporters who say the same thing.

It’s an absurd idea on its face. Trump has failed at every substantial effort he has made. He has no big success and a long chaotic trail of dangerous unfinished business.

Yet I think he may be re-elected, but getting elected as President in America is a very iffy measure of success. America is such a chaotic, divided, noisy, violent country, itself pulling in all directions, and it has elected many disastrous men – Trump, Bush, Johnson, Truman – apart from a list of mediocrities and frauds.

The only matters in which Trump has unambiguously succeeded are pushing the world closer to total economic collapse with his trade wars and tariffs and sanctions and risking the start of a large, new war with Iran. I’m sure those aren’t his conscious goals, but they are likely to be his results.

His senior appointees are literally figures from hell, people with bizarre beliefs who might work to trip him up just to get what they want as he flirts on the edge of disaster.

John Bolton, a fanatic dedicated to destroying Iran, is said to have done that several times already, as with the recent luring of the UK into foolishly seizing Iran’s oil tanker near Gibraltar. He achieved personal objectives doing that - dragging Britain into the Gulf, raising risks of war, but he almost certainly acted without Trump’s prior authority.

I think in general this is a common characteristic of extreme right-wing governments: they work not so much as unified administrations or teams as collections of grandstanding egos and gangsters pulling in different directions. This was certainly true of Hitler’s government, despite people thinking of Hitler as someone having absolute and unquestioned authority. His government was a collection of fiefdoms. The head of such a government must continually rein-in major figures, but the extreme dangers of operating in that fashion are obvious.

Trump’s is a nightmare government, as I fear we are all going to come to understand when it’s too late.

If you believe history is biography, a notion from the great historian, Thomas Carlyle, then just look at Trump’s own personal history. A lifetime of avoiding taxes, of playing with bankruptcy, of owing huge debts, of dealing with some of the shadiest people in America and abroad to assist him out of his messes, of lying incessantly, even about his golf scores, and of a lack of loyalty to associates, staff, and including his wife.

Right down to avoiding military service for the dear old flag he so regularly has himself photographed hugging. In 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, graduating college as a healthy young basketball player, he managed to buy himself an exemption from the military draft on health grounds.

All that, and his well-observed inability to focus on matters (he may well have an Attention Deficit Disorder) and to listen to others. A man who never reads anything, books or articles or staff papers. A man who expects staff and experts to sum complex matters up for him with simple language within a few brief moments. A man who has indulged the worst nepotism in living memory with two family members on the White House staff, just to have people close to him that he” trusts,” even if they are experts in nothing. A man who lies in his bed for hours alone watching multiple television sets while wolfing down McDonald’s hamburgers and Tweeting belligerent and obscene words about scores of people and events.

How is he anyone can ever regard as clever?

Easy, it results from Trump’s pattern of behavior combined with so very many people’s lack of attention to detail and short memories. Remember, Trump contradicts himself sometimes daily and does so on the public record. It’s just such a massive stream of babel, no one can possibly hope to sort it all out, but flatterers like Farage, men with definite agendas, just pick out an item here or there to praise.

Of the hundreds of careless things that Trump says and does, some of them afterward can be selected out to be regarded as cunning strokes, but that is close to meaningless. It resembles the old notion of a large number of chimpanzees banging away on typewriters, and eventually one of them actually produces a real sentence by chance.