11/11/16“Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name”
The White House. Pure. Imposing. The power seat. Occupied by 44 presidents and up until now, the 44th was deemed a landmark. The 45th has possibly Trumped them all.
I landed at Birmingham Airport 7am 11th November and for the last three days, I’ve been itching to write this blog. This is a personal view-not knowingly plagiarising anyone else’s blog or article-but just an observation of being in the land of the free, for a week.
Arriving on Thursday 3rd November, there was no escaping the Wall St Journal, Fox News, NBC, Bloomberg etc-It was all about the elections and notably, what would ‘HC’ (yes, she was known by her initials) have to trip up on, for her to lose the election-Emails came to mind.
Friday to Sunday was taken up by meeting my family (my Dad’s sister married a GI so I have lots of cousins out there!) and celebrating a wedding, so I got immersed in it all again on Monday. We ( I was staying with my late aunt’s eldest son-Lawyer, CPA and Financial Adviser) started reading about the 600,000 emails apparently sent by HC using the wrong email address. We paused…taking 3 seconds an email to read, that equates to roughly 21 days worth of emails to go through, if you have someone reading every 3 seconds, every minute, hour of the day for 21 days & yet the all clear was given a day later that all was well. We were both sitting there, watching the TV with one eyebrow raised.
DT (yup, initials again) was shown at a rally in Louisiana (I think) saying “your unadjusted unemployment is over 20%, you got crummy schools, your kids are gettin’ crummy grades, you’ve got no jobs-why not vote for me and give me a chance…I mean…what else have you got to lose?” At this point, a Bottle of Balvennie, 16yr old Triple Cask was opened and our eyebrows were raised further.
By now, I’m beginning to draw parallels with our own ‘Brexit’.
I’m not familiar with the ‘bit in the middle’ of America….I’ve been to a few states within the East and West coast during my 50yrs of seeing my family, But I haven’t been to Nebraska, Idaho, The Dakota’s, Alaska etc and who would’ve thought that DC (District of Columbia) would have a high rate of unemployed? it has the White House for goodness sake!…But it seems, much like we saw here, some 250m people were starting to show signs of having enough. Enough of bureaucracy. enough of seeing zero wage growth, enough of seeing rich get richer and enough of being prodded and push around and enough of being forgotten about.
Now, any other candidate than DC and Hilary had a problem…but a misogynist, sexist, bigoted, xenophobic, homophobic man like Donald Trump? Even Kanye West would have got more votes, surely?!! and yet……
Conversations with ‘East coast’ individuals, talked about Trump as “What you see, is what you get….At least you know what you’re getting with Trump…I don’t know what I’d get with HC…” Conversations, still east Coast, then went further ” She’d be a diplomat-seen all over the world shaking hands with leaders, that’s not where I want the president, or where we need our president-we need the president here, sorting out our issues first and foremost”
By Tuesday, my cousin is calling this tight. “We won’t know the results by 10pm or 11pm, this could go on…By 1.15am eyes could not be kept open and we were still none the wiser-Wednesday Morning-the world knew.
On Wednesday morning, I was greeting with news bulletins showing people in the HC camp being sick-literally sick at the result. It seems HC and her advisers, failed to grasp the mood of the people of America and by the people, I mean those we don’t see, the journalists don’t see but call them ‘stupid’ or ‘ill educated’..predicting Armageddon on the markets and a pompous attitude lacking any respect and more importantly, lacking any understanding of what vote won. Just as we failed to understand the mood of the people here and with our high court ruling and threats from certain factions in parliament to block Article 50, we potentially face civil riot on our hands.
I know that the vast majority of the british public fail to see what Trump can bring to the white house. He hasn’t worked as a politician, been an army general or close to any sort of public office role. He is a businessman and wants to turn his back on the rest of the world (providing it makes sense to do) and rebuild his country-In fairness, I’d be very happy if Phillip Hammond said the same thing in a few weeks time when he announces the budget-borrow money because its cheap-lets build roads, rail, runways at airports..lets put the Great back into Britain..etc
I don’t agree with Trumps’ attitude to Women, LGBT, race, colour or religion . But to me, it just goes to show what happens with the ‘silent majority’ have had enough and want a change and clearly, they Didn’t want Clinton.
Europe have already voiced their disgusted opinion of DT being ‘president elect’ USA couldn’t care less. Indeed, is it now the case, given our Referendum and the USA vote, that the eyes of the world turn to France, Holland, Italy & Germany? if Marie le Pen, Gilders, etc get in, we could be looking a very different World indeed.
All I ask, is when considering the USA and yes, I guess I’m biased because of my family- Don’t call them stupid-At a time when we remember those that served their country-They are entitled to mourn as hard as we do. DT suggests ‘boots will not be on the ground’ if it makes sense. He will need military advisers-he has no experience, but I don’t see Trump going for the ’round em up, put ’em in a field and bomb the B…rds’ as the late Kenny Everett portrayed the general, unless of course, it is deemed necessary to do so.
It will be interesting to see how Trump goes about trying to change attitudes and mindsets.
The picture? taken by me, when I was there in 2014.
The blog title? lyrics from “Sympathy for the Devil”-what else could I use.
