Fear and loathing in las Americas

I am American. By blood, I am more American than I am British. I live here of course, I’m officially British too. The UK and Europe (cough) are where I identify most strongly with and where I’m raising my family. But I also have a blue passport and I pay US taxes. My forebears are Mormons from Utah and immigrants from Yorkshire. They prospered and spread far and wide across the land, living and propagating the American dream. Today I have relatives from Maryland to California, from Ohio to Arizona, from Oregon to Pennsylvania. When I travel there I am welcomed home.

Over here we poke fun at America. Hicks, rednecks and good ol' boys. Obsessed by guns and allergies. Fifteen different kinds of milk. Neurotic, fat, stupid and uncultured. There is an element truth to all stereotypes, but almost all Americans that I have met are kind, decent and honest people. They are friendly and welcoming, when they say “have a nice day” they genuinely mean it. It is a magnificent country, beautiful and diverse. Blessed.

America, what have you done?

I have never been prouder to be an American as eight years ago. It nearly reduced me to tears as Obama accepted. This morning I was close to tears again. Distraught. What has my second country done? Fear and frailty have triumphed over common sense and decency. Traditional politics has failed. Just like Brexit here, the disenfranchised have stormed to victory on the back of a message of intolerance and a considerable amount of hot air. Just like Brexit, it no longer matters what is true and what is not – voters don’t care. People hear what they want to hear, and if you have conviction and pander to that, no matter how absurd or divorced from reality it might be, they’ll listen and they’ll believe. Donald Trump exploited that.

In a way both decisions, awful though they are, are triumphs for democracy. Whether I like it or not (I don’t, in case you were still on the fence about that), the USA will soon have a leader with a scary world view and all the grace of a toasted cheese sandwich*. But that’s what the majority of Americans wanted, they wanted change, they didn’t want traditional Washington D.C. and its elite. Americans are nice people, I can’t stress that enough. But large segments of their society are clearly hurting, and unfortunately that same demographic are also very conservative, narrow-minded and ill-informed – a dangerous combination. The Presidential election was a chance to vote for change and they took it. At least they sort of voted on their issues, something that didn’t happen for Brexit. Brexit was ultimately only a vote against the establishment and not really about EU membership. UK voters failed to distinguish between an election and a referendum. Referendums are one-offs, final, whereas elections come around again and you get a second chance. The Brexit decision that all the over 65s voted for doesn’t allow the young people whose entire lives it will ultimately affect that second chance. At least in America there’s an opportunity to vote for change in four years time, and that’s the only positive I can currently see.

It is scant comfort. The soon-to-be leader of the free world is a monumental cretin, a rich and volatile bully with a dangerous lack of experience and an incoherent/non-existent strategy. Just like Farage here, he has made it OK to be racist and bigoted again. Whilst many who voted for him are decent people with decent views who simply didn’t trust Hillary Clinton, he has also given voice to a small segment of under-represented society that have frankly appalling views. We should all be mindful that views like this were once over-represented, and look what happened then. The swing to the right has been as dramatic as it is terrifying. Hatred. Remember what Yoda said about that? Low-level racism and outright xenophobia have become acceptable again, and just like Brexit the polls got it wrong on the US election too.

I don’t know why we are all so surprised. The Leave voters and Trump voters actually find their choice mildly embarrassing, and rightly so. The surprise would have been if they had had the conviction to stand up and publicly state that they didn’t actually like their Polish neighbours very much and that yes, they were going to be voting to leave the EU. Instead they stayed silent or lied when asked, and after voting went back indoors feeling faintly smug that they had socked it to the establishment. It is obviously a lot more complicated than this. I am just a bird blogger and I don’t understand large parts of the dynamics that have led us to this point, both here and across the Atlantic, but I think it can be boiled down to a few key themes. Disenfranchisement, anxiety and resentment. The world is too big. I do not understand what is happening. It was better before.

It is the failure of successive governments – globally - to address this that has led us to where we are now. It spans every facet of government. Education, health, trade agreements, the environment, everything. Everything is interconnected in a massively complex web, and knowing where you stand in a world that moves faster than you or anyone else can stay current with has been a huge and incomprehensible shock. Voters – and the demographics are very telling – want a return to simpler times, to straight-talking leaders, and to an improvement in their lot in life. Trump and Farage, who let us not forget appeared on stage together, are the winds of change. The fact that neither of them has a scoobydoo is irrelevant.

They lied through their teeth.

Trump literally made it up as he went along. He could have said anything, frequently did, and it did not matter at all in the end. He was the outsider, the alternative, shouting long and loud what people wanted to hear. That the rhetoric was mostly and shamefully untrue ultimately meant nothing, we live in a post-factual age. There will not be a wall built along the Mexican border, that exists only in la-la land. 11 million immigrants will not be sent back to their home countries, it's simply not feasible. Muslims will not be able to be banned or monitored, it’s unconstitutional – the same constitution that preserves the right of citizens to own machine guns, and which regularly results in mass shootings of innocent people. But that’s what people wanted to hear so that’s what he said. They didn’t want to hear about liberalism and the reality of globalisation. I can’t remember who it was that said during the EU debate that the world was sick of experts, or even what side of the political divide that they were on, but they were dead right. Common sense, science, empirical fact and the truth have all gone out the window. Trump and his ilk saw that and they capitalised on it. The traditional politicians didn’t see that and they, to use an American phrase, have been run out of town. They played it wrong and they lost.

And ultimately we have all lost. All of those smug brexiteers behind their lace curtains in middle England are probably just as confused and scared as they were before, as the level of uncertainty in the world is now off the scale. There are no easy answers to the issues that are worrying people, and electing Trump doesn’t change that for Americans either. The only thing that has changed is that we will now have a dangerous buffoon in the White House next year, an unstable, uncontrollable and uncompromising man who is not fit to hold office. This is America’s new leader, the one on whose personal sanity we all in part rely, and he is a car crash waiting to happen. Sensible things like climate change deals could be ripped up, human rights will be trampled over, diplomacy will recede and militarism will increase. He will have a global impact, possibly in very very negative ways, but that irony is lost on the isolationists who voted for him. But that’s OK, because it’s America first from now on, and who cares about the rest of the planet? Or indeed the planet itself. All the jobs are coming back, all the foreigners are getting kicked out, and it will be like it used to be back in the 1950s when life was good.

Except it won’t as that isn’t the way the world works any more. American manufacturing will not come back, as when the same voters who have just sent Trump to the highest seat in the land realise that they have to pay more for their trucks, fridges, TVs and almost everything else they currently enjoy at prices cheaper than they have ever been, they will be up in arms. Hang on, we didn't vote for this! The vast majority of all the things that this odious man has said and promised are complete fiction, just like most of the empty promises made by the Leave campaigners. Remember that bus promising EU contributions shifting directly to the NHS? It’s that, but a lot bigger. Trump won’t make America great again, he’ll push America off a cliff. Just like the true implications of Brexit are only now beginning to be hinted at, job losses and financial black holes, inflation and rising prices, America can only begin to imagine the tragedy that could now unfold. God Bless America, the greatest nation on earth! Wait, whaddya mean we’re at war with eight countries? This is Britain, we’re independent, free at last from the shackles of Europe! Wait, why is my summer holiday more expensive now, and why can’t I find a cleaner? What do you mean Walkers Crisps cost more?

And that’s without considering the human cost. This impacts relationships and families. This impacts where people can go and what they can do, it restricts individual progress and mutual cooperation. It wrecks dreams. I am sounding preachy I think, but consider the opportunities now unavailable to my children following the decision to leave Europe. Think of the doors that are now closed. The answer to globalisation is not to retreat and become more insular, it is to understand it, embrace it, and make it work for you. Brexit and President Trump are steps in completely the wrong direction, and the UK and the US are rapidly heading back to the 1970s. They have set themselves back 40 years.

Elvis left the building a long time ago, reality has now followed.

*croque monsieur