The Very Late Grandson

 

Regarding our sometimes tenuous connections to the past, of which I have mentioned that of Mr. Volkov (and soon, if I have not already, that or doctorally advised Henry Kissinger) and both gasped and reproduced gasps at the embellishment of Ms. Clary, later Queen Desideria of the reborn Swedish stormakt of Sweden-Norway and inauguratrix of the Bernadotte dynasty, the perhaps strangest is that of grand- and great-grandsons. I can say I knew my great-grandfather, though not much, and I would not posit to have had a conversation with him. But drawn out, the bonds uniting familys up and down, may over personal relationships 

There Ain't No Such Thing As Free Speech

The commonly cited clique that rights do not apply to private corporations or, as perhaps would be the wiser turn of phrase, against other persons or, even better, horizontally, is seemingly melting as the ices of the Arctic before our very eyes. 

Nobody would suggest that .

Meanwhile, the haplessly absent force of the state is very present. But I am not discussing the compelled speech of 

These questions, except the core idea of free speech - punishing those who says wrong (or even refuses to speak right) and the anathema of any balanced, founding father-esque notion of freedom under responsibility, were brought to a climax with the artist previously known as Kanye sporting a balaklava, a 

Proving this, however, is a way to purchase your freedom, if yet at a seemingly grotesque cost. 

Chairman Jian

 

Anyone still professing the aged, but never quite dead, Wade-Giles system may be relieved that this post is not a very belated praise of the generalissimo, toasting yet denigrating his name by giving it the title of the upstart usurper Mao (and the pinyin translation which, to his name like the PLA to Taiwan, never quite mastered it). Rather, and not too unexpectedly, we may either rejoice or commemorate the great decade or so when the destiny of China was (safe)guarded by this man known to history as the great Deng's successor, chairman and president Jiang Zemin. 

He was the first president to hold the job since Mao, and thus the longest, until Chairman Xi may yet follow in the term whose end, and indeed beginning, he will not enjoy the benefits of, as the People's Assembly convene the following spring. And in this post, and from this post - now one of real significance associated with it in the post-Enlightenment era, to the extent that "communist" nations must follow in this - he reshaped China from the draperies of yet-breathing Deng's power base. 

It was the ninth of June which made him who he was, and thus also confirmed his fate to die in a China far from those words of Lincoln he was reportedly fond of quoting; "... of the people, by the people, and for the people." But even as Mike Wallace, another fallen giant of that generation, struggled to hold onto his senses as he quipped and questioned his defiance, the fact that this statesman mastered the English tongue was indeed something. The question was, could this alliance, forged in the heat (!) of the Cold War to savour the destruction, in their lifetime, of the Soviet Union, last? 

The Autogolpe - from the opposition benches

 

The notion of coup d'etat was indeed sure to be mentioned. 

Less certain, but issued with a clarity that leaves little wiggle-room, is the notion of the autogolpe, not merely as a comfortable alternative but the only alternative to the militant takeover deemed now both a frequent opportunity, as well as definitively unattainable (the vast, vast majority of Americans in this Trumpist America being never-Trumpers, after all) 

The India Problem

 

A momentous event, as expected as the proclaimed first place of the Chinese economy, but perhaps not so soon, was ever the ascent of old India to the place of first nation among the nations, the proverbial "largest" country in the world. And while this entire subcontinent - sub to a continent of continents - is substantial and rich in its geographical, topographical and climatological features, as well as the only home to the tiger and other species, it is the equally crammed and convoluted home of one point near four billion human beings, a number superadded and enlarged and reproduced (mostly) by a factor of four since independence in 1947. It was this independence which saw the breaking of the back of Britain's empire, Attlee's premier achievement (over the instating of the NHS, or the decimation of the same by introducing fees for dental care to pay for his Korean War effort) and the accomplishment of creating an India, singular sense, with a single language and administration. For this, maybe Attlee indeed may deserve as much credit as Nehru, if not as much recognition, and on the back of this process we find the long road now crowned by the most populated country in the world, finally, having an elected government by, for and because of its own people. 

This most ancient of nations, however, has never been taken seriously in the same manner as old Zhongguo. 

This Great Democracy of ours

Bar a pluck of - mainly belated - words concerning the legitimacy of the 2020 election, and particularly its simultaneously violent and (as far as coups go) pathetic afterbirth, I have generally kept quiet since my equally un-ubiquitous, but generally well-chosen comments of 2016. And largely this is a deliberate choice but, like so many things, deliberate by the shove of slovenliness. 

And here we stand, at this great, if not the first, precipice of democracy versus the candidates of good and, if not national salvation, preservation and continuity of an existent decency. 

One Hundred Years, Cent'Anni

 

In a very symbolic feat, the long-lived president Mattarella - who may quite soon become the longest-governing head of state for a similar span as well - inaugurated Giorgia Meloni, head of the Fratelli d'Italia faction, as head of the Italian government. This was quite swiftly proclaimed if not the first fascist, then certainly the first extreme right, or most far-right of all governments since the great war, or even since Mussolini in 1943. This near-eighty year span, 

A sixty year-old horror

In the foreign policy marking - or marring - out rime, making distinctions between the "good" powers, those of democratic transitions of power, and those of acts of scheming, or of great evil or nationalistic fervour or chauvinistic gain, of short sight or the calculated gain of leadership as opposed to those of country (yet, in a good or inclusive or at the very least defensible fashion). One great upset of mine this year of bellum horribilis was the remark by a certain columnist at a certain liberal daily of the crime of the Russians of interfering with French "democratic stabilisation operations". This came too short after the too easy to deconstruct a neologism of "special military operation" and was too audacious not to be discounted but by the most gullible, ill-advised, frivolous reader, and thus must have been carried off gently into the night of no further questions. But only if it did not awaken certain harder-edged truths, concerning certain truths in our undead past (not going back to 1619, or even 1830) and symbolised, in its blood-soaked unraveling, by this night of October 17, in sweet and - to France - regenerating 1961. The facts of such a night has already been best penned by Peter Hitchens: 

Using pick handles and rifle butts, the police force of one of the world’s most civilized countries surrounded and savagely beat hundreds of dark-skinned men. They then threw them into the beautiful river that flows through a city celebrated for its cultural and artistic wonders. Those who were still alive after the beatings were left to drown.

This was Paris, City of Lights, on the night of October 17, 1961. To this day, nobody knows how many peaceful Algerian protesters died in this episode, concealed for years by menacing state power and a ­compliant press. Most estimates are in the hundreds. General Charles de Gaulle, towering hero of resistance to Hitler, had recently become President of France in an undoubted military putsch, tactfully concealed but firmly based upon paratroopers. He cannot possibly have been unaware of what was done that night.

This truth does not eradicate previous crimes from the French government, or succession of governments of colours, forms and sentiments as differing as to those of Germany or Spain, but were committed under the present, 1958 Constitution, and necessarily leaves a trace when the question of "democratic stabilisation operations" and the role of France in its ex-colonies ("ex" here denoting a relationship of enduring cohabitation, economic integration and recurrent violence) and the answer to the question why Russia, a lesser economy and a more shameful state - if we are to believe our democratic, or democratically necessary news outlets - seems to pull greater weight, and certainly sympathy, in these parts of the world and many others, in spite of the praises (and silences) of commentators so precious to our democracy as Mr. Jonsson and his ilk. 

Days such as this, who seem to walk with iron shoes and never be very far away - and undoubtedly carry certain day-and-party political inhibitions and designs - are necessary to reminisce in the hard facts that still govern our present day to day political affairs, and the relations between states which now - for a certainty - do not grow like a fungi towards universal hegemony for the free and open and democratic (terms that are internally as contradictory as they are fraternal) states or "the free world". Certainly France is now a polity better assuring rights for its citizens , and certainly these facts are much harder across France's own little pond - to the lands once united with this great union of free states, but sadly no longer - and not only or even deliberately on account of French politicians. No more than the guilt Rwandians issuing racist and race-designating passports, and then blows from the machete, thirty and thirty-five years after the departure of Belgian colonial administrators should or could be admonished, or neglected, nor minimised, nor should we forgive the acts of Algerian authoritarians (or African slave-traders, shut down by European colonial powers, with the black-shirted masters of the first fascist states being among the last). Here, I must say I have developed a sensation I once considered a defect, with the , albeit one united with relaxation of the one enlightened/blighted with the hard facts of our common past. 

The Oldest Horror

Our oldest horror, old as it is only by the centimeters and millimeters splitting us from the great carnage that was the first half of the 20th century, may be approaching more swiftly than we have seen before. And with our oldest horror, I mean that the world will end in a gulf of fire and toxic rain, destroying or covering as a blanket of dismay the survivors. 

This multitude of emotions is one I feel for the recent, and seemingly unstoppable wave of Ukrainian victories in the territories only so recently claimed for the Russian federation. 

The Case for Human Resilience

It would not be an exaggeration to say we are living in a time of crisis. Only the nature of the problem, and thus the means employed to find resolution, or at least release from the sensation of dread, is heavily disputed. Most accurately, we may look on an extinction or near-extinction event. 

The best, and most inadequate answer thus may be that we have been here before. In many shapes, doomsday events and their witnesses and prophets have been preserved for posterity, adding to the general sensation that this cannot be the end times. Most people who are not profiting would like to see them, after all. 

Unfortunately, this can not be said of an apocalyptic thermonuclear event, nor about the full implications of the climate catastrophe emerging through several (af)fronts. The question of rising temperatures aside, ground waters and mass extinction will gradually but very severely impact the conditions necessary to sustain life, and thus set in force other, human actions possibly exacerbating the dilemma. In short, human population and consumerism has stepped out of clear waters, now on an inexorable course to drown - or finally swim. And worse, it will not only involve a course of drastic and unprecedented vigour and innovation, but also the harder art of strategic self-discipline and holding back desires. Not a godly man myself (nor a godly woman) I do not appreciate this part, and will exhaust any possibility for alternative roads to the same ends; once I desire them, that is. And that already excludes a whole bunch. 

We have prevailed, and even in these times of inequality and desperation - the twilight of the West, that is - and their implications, 

The return of Lula

Forest, as his surname reads in the old learned tongue,  will run this successful gauntlet to a successful finish. Nothing but a full-scale revolution by (para)military forces seems poised to counter it. And with this return in triumph, not only from the exile of three terms out of office, but to his high point in a political career spanning half a century, and seeing him run for the supreme office of state and government six times, the first three coming second. 

The female Mussolini, a century later

 

The first female Prime Minister, or a fascism resurgent, fittingly (though not treated as such) with only weeks left to the centenary of the march - or, in the Duce's case, train ticket purchaser - to Rome? I could not say, for the truth of events is said to inevitably be those of the beholder. But at the same time, other and often the very same voices cry out: Fascism! Here, now embodied in something, or someone generally thought to represent the new, the best, the salvation or rebirth of Western democracy - young, female, driven, aiming a lance at the pus-riddled boil . Such rhetoric is of course not reserved to those heralding the ever-threatened, ever-victorious (and until recently finished) march of democracy across the world, and the victories gained much necessarily, if this democracy is to involve regular and competitive elections, be put to the test every generation, if not every day. Every day, we are asked to evaluate and re-evaluate these sacred and undeniable truths, and whether Western man - and, now very much, woman - very much desireth to live under the constraints, or absence of such's, of this democracy and liberalism. 

The Duce himself, after experimenting adolescently with every drug of extremist, or let's say radical politics (radical, or radix, being - like fundamentalist - a matter of "back to the roots", thus making the flavour of the term more conservative than I'd say I previously found... but the taste of knowledge is not always pleasant). 

This new, thawing war

The Russian invasion of a now sovereign Ukraine, called "special" and undoubtedly military, has beyond the question of numerous ends showed within a continuing line or cycles of history, imposed upon us a confrontation between West and East, between Russia and the United States and its allies. That this is the main takeaway seems apparent, more important than the question of Ukraine; more than the events recently occurring near Bucha and Izium, whatever the legal terminology and consequences. 

And in this heralded new Cold War, now increasingly warm even to German homeowners, must not go beyond the tepid without 

This new Iran or ours

It was impossible to fathom, perhaps even to the Mullahs then entering their fourth decade of ever-continuing ascendancy over new generations' souls and - more importantly, I think - bodies, that the grim, blood-soaked and cinematographically slow and muted death of Neda Agha-Soltan would inject vital energy and a desire beyond the peril of death (perhaps to be branded as fanatical) into a movement clearly posed to overthrow the Islamic republic. 

Now, with an evermore popular uprising, simple as well as fatal in its intention, aimed at the moral laws of the continually existent Islamic republic, the same questions needs be posed with ever-growing 

This new Sweden of ours

 I commented the last election in this fair(ly) hyperborean non-republic in dubious and not-friendly-to-estimate-terms, with the capital solution that either the liberal parties would be squeezed out and join a bloc of left, or the ostensible left, in opposition to a right-far right complacency, or else the ostensible far right would link hands with their presumed (and very much courted) brethren to oust the Labour predominance still in the air - and now reaffirmed, in a strong kind, in this very precarious crisis-ridden election of ours. Now both these events have occurred, and a resurgent right... somewhat resurgent, and somewhat of the right, is returned into power, and only the limitations of a deeply divided, schizophrenic Liberal party group and the inevitable 

Come on, now they're rising up

 The revocation of Italian society and - emphasise superfluous - politics of Fascism, capital F imposed to make the Italian ending superfluous as well, has been a story of many twists and turns. Its constitution makes both the republic unassailable and the reconstituting of the (1943) dethroned and defrocked fascist party illegal (an event which thus occurred already before the provision was enacted; a rare case of pre-constitutional unconstitutionalism) 

A small service to Her Majesty

Among the scariest events are those who - like our own, never-to-be-experienced mortality - are those whose arrival are not only common, but inexorable. The counting down, from the inevitable (although delayed to such a point transcending immortality) or mother and namesake Elizabeth to that of the good consort, to 

A Toast to Gorby

Barely four years ago, a time which now seems ever distant, I wrote a column upholding - or perhaps condemning - the Soviet Union's first leader Vladimir Lenin as one of the greats of the 20th century. It is an era now come to a peculiarly end, almost a century later, with the death of the man whose tutelage marked the final years of the Soviet empire.  

On Martyrdom and Beards

 

There are, amongst the names frequently mentioned as influencing Putin's drive, or bid, for control of Eastern Europe and the (re)establishment of a sphere guaranteeing this independence, one which is names quantitatively often but also with a special zeal. His name, as you will know, is Dugin, and his brain is - according to the proverbial statement - Putin's own. I cannot but shrink in disbelief, or at least frown, and move to a distance away from the proverbial speaker, not so much because Dugin's lack of enthusiasm as his laudable idealism and tendency towards the abstract. While hard-fact pragmatic can-do men can also be idealogical, such as Bannon, and the Rasputins of the world change its course from time to time, Dugin has that diabolical quality of being a man who actually believes in what he is saying, is thinking. 

Simon Jenkins is an lean, skinny idiot and otherwise right as often as not

 

In my previous exchange, if you call it that, with The Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins, emphasising his support for - I will not call it otherwise - the Assad regime's imminent victory in Syria, describing beyond all reasonable doubt that it was a good thing, and that all former colonial powers - as well as non-French or -Turkish ones - should merely stand idly by as this passing of inexorable phases of human conduct occurred, I held the view that he was, and likely would continue in a state of being, wrong as well as cynical. Being a keen, educated, sophisticated - to a degree - liberal columnist, and emphasising his support so civilly for a pan-Arab, national socialist dictator (I'd say fascist, but in solidarity with undue victims of the phrase, I stand by the longeuresque designation) was worthy of some scorn. But like to hate as you may, his previous, just as defaitist - and far more relevant - critique of western inability to align interests in Syria with not-as-bad dictator Putin, rang a sordid and very evident truth. I have spoken, too little, of the need to ground reasonably sceptical views of foreign, authoritarian superpowers - I am talking, again, of the great red dragon - in coexistence with a post-Communist Russian state, whether a fascist or democratic-robber baronesque or their synthesis, the Putinist one - and in the Syrian case, the decision or non-decision to walk alongside Assad's daring bluff to turn the conflict into one against audacious bath-robed, Kalashnikov-wriggling blackbeards has certainly left an open hole void of reason and tactfulness in failing to synchronise efforts with Russia's colder, but just as emphatic and, I suppose, correct derision against said blackbeards in order to contain its own very real presence of such forces within her (recognised) borders. Well, in a world where foreign policy is not governed by Palme-esque idealist loudmouthery (and for all said or shouted on the subject, it very seldom is) one would tend to cooperate with actors with similar interests, and similar foes. Whatever could be spoken of Nixon, could not be said of Clinton, and often in the negative sense. And the failure to conscript, as well as lift, a post-revolutionary, post-authoritarian Russia into just that, and a beacon of liberty and light or something vaguely resembling it, and even a member of the western alliance, is returning like proverbial roosters, now sordidly recognised as the most undesirable aliens. 

On this topic, now brought into the very present and a presence by the edge of "Europe", however defined in Western (European) terms, has now elongated into a very real proxy war between "West" and "East", as the factual "East" is still rising. And whatever could be spoken on the subject of arming an enemy of Russia, as well as a former subject-republic, in open war against its former master country, the inability to provide direct or adequate aid, the repercussions and consequences of the frozen wasteland the elongated frontier is coagulating into, we must countenance that the prime act of Western effort, or aggression, of toppling the Russian economy and isolating it in a fashion akin to, say, the former Afrikaner regime, has utterly and at the same time gradually failed. Whereas "stronger than ever" is a cliché, and while the many outrageous rumours of Putin's crumbling health cannot conceal the inevitably descendant circle of his natural age and the political repercussions it will produce - now being the longest Russian leader since Stalin, he has soon outlived him too - there is absolutely nothing we did not know a year, or eight years in the past, which suggests that either he or the Russian state is crumbling. And for his very questioned longevity, the two are not the same. A successor, let alone a Navalny, may be a tougher nut, and more fatal. The benefits of Putinism, for those who would recognise it, may not be (truly) recognised in Grozny, but a hand has been continuously offered, prodded, waved off and slapped, and only sympathy for the former subjects of the Russian yoke has kept it in the cold. Now, my question is, how much longer will the West endure, in the faint hope that our grand strategy would result in what Western leaders have wanted for decades, nay, centuries; a complete Russian collapse and a new order in the East, by whatever name and nature it is desired? 

I think, with all the unrecognisable variables in the air, that the situation is like to remind of the "solutions" of 2014 and 2015, with the war grinding down, greater Russian bounties to a higher and higher price, and a final - if unspoken - settlement. This may be for the sake of bringing peace, or restoring Europe to something before the energy crisis, or for the actual purpose of bettering the conditions of the subjects of Putinism - who must then just as well be more likely to rise up and alter the system which, we hear, is not theirs - but under no circumstances will the current war of roubles and dollars last, unless it is upped in direction of total and complete annihilation. This should never be ruled out, but I hold it as unlikely as Europeans, emphasis on Germans, will look in direction of different solutions. In this, Ukrainians will only serve as cheaper and cheaper pawns, and while Putin's aim of distancing Ukraine from the west has forever failed - at least for any such future he may be part of - it is a knowledge he must hold closer to heart than Ukrainians, or Russians, ever were. 

The French Resurgence

 

The Empire which, with the exception of the Napoleonic project, endured a stylish and ludicrous crawl towards obscurity, has nevertheless displayed a stunning ability not to die. And with the self-expulsion of the United Kingdom from the European community, and not just the union, and Germany's haphazard and nothing if not reluctant attempt to rise from the long struggle of not-quite-sovereign nationhood imposed alongside liberal democracy, and which has marked (or marred) the federal republic, France still stands - or believe itself to be. 

The books that defined a quarter century

 Anything said in retrospect of J.K. Rowling's momentous Harry Potter novels would risk underestimating, as opposed to the common rule, the momentous and against-all-expectation momentum these books rode on when dumped on the bookshelves, strictly short-term. I remember myself perfectly well, walking into a store in Uppsala in 2000, finding a stack of the second book - then just translated into Swedish, with the wonderful - and far less vexing than the first - cover by Tiden's Alvaro Tapia, as well as the original letter font, and being told by the nice lady that, as of that date, I couldn't have one. 

Being en route to Santorini (as I persist in calling it; if Mussolini be pleased to hear the word, who am I to deny that?) and with no ability to get a Swedish copy until our return, my mother insisted. And got through. As the wheels were turning to make contact with the tarmac on my journey home, I very memorably pushed through the scene where a shrieking, palsy-ridden Tom Riddle is lost in thin air as the first of many his horcruxes is destroyed by a yet again mortally wounded bespectacled boy of twelve. The first novel I mostly remember for jogging and spooling through in competition with my dear cousin Lotta - though not skipping, except for reading that short, fateful first sentence of the last chapter, "The Man With Two Faces", perhaps the best part of the novel, I must admit, and the only one I didn't quite enjoy reading (the fifth being a chunk of slough, but so was Godfather II the first time). The second through sixth, as far as I got before Tom Törnblom - "Thornflower", a surname being almost Harry Potter-adequate in its Englishness and brusqueness, and revenge I got years later, if somewhat imbued by the whims of Stephen King - ran across the stone-covered Hogwartsian hallway and cried out the words signalling the demise of Dumbledore, and by whose hand (I wonder, now more frequently, whether he actually got through to the momentous chapter which outlined whose hand, or rather words, guided that venomously self-loathing uttering of Avada Kedavra) it was. Then there was silence, and as I discovered many other things - the English language, for one, which I hadn't really tasted throughout those first six years - while Harry remained on the shelf. 

And then came the year 2009 and the sixth film. I had missed out on the fifth, in part a demonstration of which I had already, if just as passively, expressed against the more profound novels, but soon came to regret (and regret still, if not for the narrative or storytelling qualities of Mr. Yates, great as they may have been already then, and whose faults seemed to be identical to those of the one-off Mr. Goldenberg). Not for the sixth installment though, which for indescribable, inexplicable reasons I looked very much forward to watching, and did watch - somewhat troubled, as the only film where I had not, painstakingly, not fully read - with two dear friends and a great candy bowl which I believe I still possess (the contents being, through force of cinematic endurance, vanished as through magic, with other things). It was a slightly transcending experience, or at least enough for me to recommend it to a drove of people, including the (perhaps superior) novel on which it was based, and which had - I must admit I felt the gist of this, and lived it fully as I turned those pages to a conclusion already told, at least twice - resurrected Harry from the half-dead spun into my mind, quite more alive than he had ever been. Upon discovering this, I was only too late, in my judgment at the time, but precisely two years late (as I had, I guess, for the English edition regarding the first book) to acquire and read the final of finales, and in an experiencing only passably able to rekindle and appreciate the fact that it remained unspoiled but for the predictions of my mind, and oh... what a conclusion. Perhaps not so much as I expected, but in hindsight I can say I truly enjoyed it, and had the pressure been on my shoulders to conclude this adventure, and preferably quickly, with the gazes and desires and letters of the world adding to that pressure, I could only and justly have felt quite alright at penning those last words (not of the epilogue, which I fully believe preexisted them, in a reflection of that other writer, George of the lands in the West, where Catelyn and Robb were proclaimed dead before the party had even ceased).  

Colony, continuity, correspondence, colonoscopy...?

 

I first thought to name this article "the scourge of colonialism", but only one who has not thought fully or truly on the actual scourge of the Opium Wars, and their legacy, and the efforts sturdily "required" to ameliorate them once the dragon had raised its head throughout, 

On the issue of the treaties, I would expect no less from old Qing - even the ageing and collapsing older Qing - to approve of the treaties that so much bore the badge of colonial subjugation. Whether they were formally recognised, I would hold no jaw to drop were that the case, although if such a sentiment prevailed (and in my best guess it did not) the subsequent friendly cooperative readressment 

The Monarch

At the start of the last century finished, there was one queen whose reign was unlikely to be rivalled. In a sense it was, by the king-emperor Franz Joseph, who had followed her after eleven years and survived her by fifteen; a period best forgotten by those of that class to have seen it. And perhaps in this as well, the ruminations as well as the glories of the monarchy being at their very best in this new golden age of a sun already bent on setting. Why? 

Elizabeth never served as Empress, missing out of that chance by mere years of her father's placable health, which would eventually collapse and ensure her a reign longer than her namesake - or even  

The Scourge of Henry

The man who - perhaps fittingly - made his last, and perhaps ultimate, appearance at Davos World Economic Forum this week, had only just escaped the clutches of the Nazi state in 1938, at a time when its territorial ambitions were as limited as its bloodlust was teetered (and limited to scions of its ruling party, its immature, unruly military wing, and thousands of Basque subjects of still-emerging Head of State general Franco) as Prime Minister Chamberlain - also just appointed - made a Faustian, or possibly Trumpian, "deal" with Chancellor Hitler over not only the disputed, and mainly German, Sudetenland but selling off Czechoslovakia as a whole in exchange for said Chancellor's autograph. Now, at the ripe age of ninety-eight and celebrating, presumably in Switzerland, a mighty riper ninety-nine tomorrow (thus entering his hundredth year) the old bastard and first European-born Secretary of State (preceding the pre-Munich-Czechoslovakian-born, and recently predeceased Madam Kunin) proposed to end the emerging security crisis-turned-disaster over Ukraine by a similar Faustian, or Munich-ian proposal of ceding Crimea, formerly Russian and more lately a claimant for independence, and its majority-Russian population, into the clutches of very-current and mighty active, for a near-septuagenarian and in age of being Henry's child, president Putin.  

In this, and in giving the Devil his due, I deem him right. Whereas the dilemma already postulated in his twenties, of a world where one - and then two - superpowers, armed with immensely destructive weapons well beyond the range of their own destructions, mankind (as it was then, and even 20 years later) must finally learn to behave. In light of this knowledge, matured into wisdom and praxis, the price of nuclear war over parts of Ukraine would seem a more ridiculous price than Korea, or Hungary, or even sweet Berlin. How such a handover, of undeniable Munich-esque proportions, is to occur - and not stretch beyond the Sudeten analogy into "Ukrainian Ukraine", for just as sure as Crimea may be just as, or decidedly more Russian, so Mr. Putin's speech is irredentist dogma in its denial of the Ukrainian nation undeniably, if regrettable to some, developing out of the eternities of geographical and topographical differences, centuries of linguistic, cultural, ethnic recompositions and realities of frontier life, and now decades of semi-self rule. His speech is as unlikely to vindicate a (self-assured) Russian spirit in independent Ukraine as he is to be elected its president, too, after a free multi-party election, or his stooges Pushilin, Pasechnik, Balitsky or Saldo, which itself would require the ejection of every Russian under arms from its space. Crimea is different, not only for security purposes but the popular sentiments "on the ground", so firmly expressed by the referendum of the rifle when green men overran it so effectively in 2014, and then pulled the trousers from the ostensible order of the past quarter century. While the efficiency, and subsequent slyly waged proxy wars, clearly concealed the Russian military might in its true glory, they also reflect a hard truth too substantial to be swallowed in tablet form, or resolved through calls for genocide. 

My ability to aptly finish biographies, long denied to reemerge with the Englishman Jackson's great De Gaulle biography last year, has been recently allured by Niall Ferguson's project to - with the statesman's ostensible cooperation, although we may wonder how far - 

Jackson's and Ferguson's countryman (still, in the latter case) Hitchens may have pointed out 

So, apart from that, what is he? 

Roe, and and the terrifying virtue of precedent

For the entire life of my great-grandfather, who I knew and remember quite well, up until him having aged into the second half a century of his existence, and for several years before his conception, the Supreme Court of the United States did uphold the now much disgraced notion of "separate but equal" for being, in fact, a thin veil over a reality of the most egregious inequality in American education. It has been said, by constitutional scholars across the proverbial but now ever-increasingly concrete aisle, to be a super-precedent. This term has been flung about not least in the now penultimate confirmation process, hurried and rushed over in much heat and fray, at the close of 2020 with an election already undergoing, with the question fluttered across news outlets 

The paradox, or reliance and innate flaw of legal reasoning, and the ability of a decision so wrongly decided to endure and flourish, is at the heart of the legal argument concerning Roe v. Wade and the actual, governing precedent currently subject to debate, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The Casey so often, or sometimes, discussed being the much-dead (and long before without a heartbeat) Democratic Governor Casey of Pennsylvania, who mixed pro-union and workers' right policies with pro-gun and pro-life (or should I say anti-life and anti-choice) policies, represented nobody's actual belief - save, perhaps, the centrist Justices who crafted it out of the crumbling tower of Roe, but nonetheless is upheld as the shield safeguarding the most-spoken right of American women. Whereas the current senator Casey, of the body of voluntarily ejaculating Casey Sr:s body, has very much been touted in line with a new Democratic orthodoxy, whether of the neoliberal or of the extreme left (I think a little of both, in a ghastly mixture challenging the old left coherent with a more Democratic-governed, as well as more equitable America) the battle lines have been greatly redrawn, with the example of Governor Kennedy of Louisiana - one of few blue states in a red band of ostensible backwardness - being mostly ignored, when not condemned. In this realignment, casting the GOP as the now abominated party of cranks and puritanical extremists ostensibly  wishing to impose, by the point of a gun, a Calvinist autocracy (ostensibly welcoming the Papist likes of Casey, who argued the case of life before the Supreme Court by crafting the pitiful law then challenged) and the Democratic party as, well, "not Calvin, not Hitler, not the rape and destruction of the Earth within the next electoral cycle". In the context of abortion, this spells to the maintenance of a right either clearly spelled out in the constitutional ahadith issued throughout a period of the 1940s through 1970s or in the metaphysical realm of natural rights, versus the gradual disintegration of said constitutional (if not metaphysical or natural) jurisprudence. 

On the question of jurisprudence, in essence two camps have emerged, with a number of (symptomatically more intelligible) voices pressing the virtue and value of the precedent, whether it can be salvaged through the preserving mists of time, but in essence talking - or sputtering - their gall against the object allegedly worthy of the greatest scorn: The draft itself (this not being an opinion, and much less law, and even as the final majority opinion it would not redraw any existing law) or the leaker (whose hand thus, again ostensibly, could shape and twist the minds and hands of the supreme nine so as to change the governing majority) and the poor example set by unleashing, let alone regarding ulterior motives concerning the final result, this half-baked fetus or jurisprudential change, tantamount to revolution. 

It has also been said, very vitriolically and (it must be said) frivolously, that Brown v. Board of Education, Obergefell v. Hodges and possibly Lawrence v. Texas (in short, the great legacy of the ever-praised Justice Kennedy) would be evicted similarly, and very lately, in spite of - shall we say - substantial reliance interests. We know, 

This in effect 

On the question itself I suspect, as had also been said, if 

"She might have it"

 

In my last scrutinisation of the last (to this date) presidential election of the Fifth republic - and the glorious or sordid prospect for a sixth - I conceded the grand, if not exactly Gaullesque ambitions of Madame Le Pen might yet result in her combustion. 

To this backdrop, even with the many, and very French, cases of resistance to - I would not call it incompetence, who for his coldness or banker-ness or presumed betrayal of a programme he announced very clearly, or the party which took him there and which he stepped out of without really changing - M. Macron it would seem apparent, even appropriate, to recognise his unprecedented (since, bar a case of chalefing Le Pen Père, Mitterrand in 1988) re-election as expected. But whereas his election in 2017 was certainly expected, it was never taken for granted as the just-mentioned case of Le Pen's father losing out in 2002. Certainly heavy voices expected a "left-oozing" Macron, just out of the Socialist party once of Mitterrand, Mauroy and Jospin, to fight a heavy fight with a right-wing bloc firmly, if not blazingly, standing behind his opponent. 

But as any Leninist would tell you: Fascism is little but capitalism in decay, or rather or more precisely, the most extreme, chauvinistic and violent elements of finance capital (ofttimes composed of "lower" elements pressed by the said decays of capitalism) hence created and tactfully unleashed, guided and financed against the rising tides of a potent workers' movement. And in order to put that label at Le Pen one would have to acclaim, even in 2017, that she was the candidate of big business. This assertion, while a case semantically could be spelled out, is so patently untrue that nobody bothered to make, lest they would immediately maim it. Unfortunately, such an analysis force us to consider some unfortunate truths about the Macron candidacy, and why this man formerly of the left (as was Mosley, Mussolini, and other M:s) is now the given, decent choice of big business. 

What then, would make the fantastic words (I use the adjective not in the subjective sense) of Le Pen President in 2017 more of a reality in the world of today? Whereas the "fascist" label seems more distant - and admittedly less potent . with a Macron now labelled as a president des riches, of the capitalists in decay hoping for his resurrection (and the recapture of his reformist movement of the National Assembly, which between a strong, reformed Rassemblement and a united left seems more far-flung) for yet another five years, the frenzy with which the candidate of darkness must be denounced more firmly and earnestly than the decent, yet unabideable president of the wealthy, . The "woke", pseudo-progressive phenomenon so ostensibly portended by French intellectuals seems far less potent, so to speak, in France, and not least within the Melenchonist left, and with it, the outright support - if with token demonisations - of the candidate of the "decent", corporate-friendly center-left more concerned with teenagers' underwear and a vague unspecified "hatred" emanating, above all, from these opaque lower elements rather than spilling from the factually privileged down on them, than the rift which predisposes these classes in the first place. The left, if it was not clear already in 2017 - or well before then - is dead.  

Le Pen President! So, why not? Why not in 2017? Well, it is aphoristically true that if the candidates are of the brand . Or, less phlegmatically, a candidate of the moderate center will gauge the extremes on one side alongside some of the moderates of the other, and thus conquer. But this asks only the further question how the candidates are placed on this scale, who gets to say whether Macron is in fact center-left or center-right, what the attributes of these "far-thing" people are, and if it does not align with the general presumptions on economics; who gets to distribute them. Who gets to paint you , and thus assure your opponent the presidency, and for how long will that work? 

The presumption of Le Pen as the leftist in the race is thus more enticing than it was in 2017, and against the furore against Macron as a president or bankers, but not of brownshirts (as if the former were not behind the latter, remember?) and the experience of his factual policies for half a decade is now turning the wheel against this simplicitous case, "better (to be fucked by) the banker than the fascist". Well excuse me, but after five years (of wild, bloodied thrusting, and accompanying shrieks), who will repeat that chant but the most simple-minded? This is only exacerbated by the seeming unwillingness - very understandable, even if it could be called reckless - of Macron to see and care . To his credit, his has been a very open, announced and consistent journey across not classes, but actors on the political spectrum. He has, without apology and with very little disinformation (this word) claimed the French must work longer weeks, more years and possibly with less complaints and less pay, and they love him for it. 

In a dictatorship, this insanity of coupling, or rather not-decoupling yourself from the one you hate, may well be explained in the imminent harm, rather than emptiness and despondency, such a divorce might immediately entailed. But this is a democracy, and supposedly a fair, broad and (in my own view) vibrant one, so, where are the options? 

Melenchon, the man who would take the place not of Hollande, or Jospin, but of the broad leftist boglands they emerged from, the alligator not hesitant in striking out and grabbing for the chunk the workers' and students - and other groups but not foremost all these considered at the expense of the first, and with no identity considered before that of wage-earner - should have stood against Le Pen, and if he does, conventional wisdom will tell you that he might actually have it. I consider this one of the most apparent avenues for a Madame Le Pen victory, for reasons previously stated - a centre-right, or rather centrist candidate against a "far-left" breed will mobilise the entire right, and so by force of secret ballot there is less to keep the far-right stench out of the booths as keeping the previously (?) maximum-wage Melenchon out of their account books - but I am quite hesitant. Rather, and perhaps more depressingly, the solution of electing a Melenchon, a Saint-Just but thrice as old and short-sighted and with a glint of Obi-Wan (not only in his holographic performances) and emasculating him by dealing him an indelible right to far-right National Assembly with a majority kept by Republicans and Macronists, and a mongrel government eluding from that, and the defeats and shortfalls coming, would be preferable, even if the highest office would now truly (as it were, for a few years, in the 1980s) held by an enemy of bankers. This would be likely, and perhaps more easy to contain than Le Pen, and in fairness deal her supporters a number of key victories, particularly regarding trans-national financial and political institutions. 

So why not woo her? Is this a question of brand, of the left having so firmly entrenched itself in a war against the dirty plebs and proles that have amassed themselves under the Rassemblement banner, hardly washed since last, and now poised to destroy the France of... who? Of Hugo, Balzac and Moliere? The France dreamed up by European bureaucrats? Why not select a Le Pen, give her a leftist ? Is this just too implausible? 

An oath, sans-tennis court

If the republic of Tunisia seems a wonder child of the now very surpassed Arab Spring, and perhaps the only in the league to live up to the name (or, at least, epitaph) of republicanism, 

As the ambassador told me, with a fitting blockade of plastic between our mouths: Read my lips, the Tunisians will not accept another dictatorship, okay?! Truth be told, and with all respect to the heroes of the first, unprecedented (that year, and turn of a decade) of the Arab revolutions, I would have accepted the cry more if made by a Lebanese. For whatever the identitarian-based, sectarian, never particularly stable democracy can welter itself into, it has understood the plight or tyrants or tawagit (borrowing the Dawlah's favourite phrase) and the core of civilised political structure's understanding of anti-autocracy; perhaps better, indeed, than some Western constitutions... such as the one of the country whose bonds it let slip. But Tunisia, while enacting a , surely Tunisia should have stood firm. Or not? If so, what were the causes, and were they as ingrained as seemingly those of the Egyptian counter-revolution of 2012-14, and of Yemen, which was condemned to a plebiscite of weapons pretty much before the shot was fired; perhaps, in earnest, since "unification" in 1990? 

Tunisia is at a crossroads as no Arab country is, and its political and civic culture is - predictably - a reflection of this sad reckoning with its positive legacy as the sole healthy child of the revolutions of 2010-11. The fact that it had its taghut - the blissless and unresponsive Ben Ali - and its founding tyrant, the admirable but much-overstaying his metaphorical welcome (and very real faculties) Bourguiba, is not eclipsing this fact more than the obvious half-baked nature of French retreat from its ex-colonial possessions ("ex" as in still living in, or returning to the apartment, storing her stuff, emptying fridge and porcelain cabinets and taking earnings from the kitchen counter to pay the rent, of the Elysée that is). Half of Africa, or a good third for a less grand phrase, is owned by France rather than any "exterior" force, and it is France which will, in competition with China, Russia and America the Liberator, battle for the fate and soul of the continent. The Tunisian backslide is only one blot in this trend, if particularly tragic with liberal democracy, and perhaps electoral politics as a whole, now dying in the metaphorical darkness. 

Who is then this man, Kais Saied, who aims to undo what has been fought and preserved and fought still for many years, even the promises of generations, and who are his backers? Unlike Ben Ali and, yes, Bourguiba, it is not enough to secure properly the reins he, too, has fought and (metaphorically, if not eventually) died for. Being a seasoned constitutional scholar, and lacking the generation up to his popular and somewhat transient predecessor's age, he seems to unite the old and new Tunisia and firmly putting the mechanisms of authority for the purpose of delivering independent Tunisia into the future. But what will his constitution bring? 

While the development of the decade past may seem for nothing, it also spawned a political culture which I like - a bit optimistically - to associate with the more long-grown fruits of the Arab socialist and nationalist movements, and what might tenuously be described as "secular Arab social democracy"... now speeding onto a highway, at a gear and pace set by its domestic conditions, with unpleased co-motorists making their best to holler and interfere with the process as they please. 

The 18th Brumaire of Justin-avec-le-anus

The tendency of history to repeat herself, as so often claimed since Karl Marx' tiresome rather than precocious, but notwithstanding memorable observation that Louis-Napoleon's seizure of power was something very different to his uncle's both in its merits, conduct, grandeur and all else except mayhaps for its eventual conclusion, so almost as to be absurd. 

Yes, history does repeat itself often enough that I need not repeat the rest, and the pup once praised by Nixon (a seldom-broadcasted factoid) and bestowed a teddy bear (invoking one of the better if, arguably, not the most constitutionally minded of his party forbearers) by the soon-disgraced attempt at an autocrat has grown into a man or - invoking the words of the Lord of Horn Hill - something resembling one at least. And if Marx had lived, as he does for so many - if hardly for young Justin - what would his remarks have been - apart from the usual analyses ending in the one precocious (?) statement of "capitalism" and "decay"? Neither him, nor his belligerent scion Lenin would be likely to offer support. 

Most interestingly, and very symptomatic for its time, the tendency is to blame these critics of authoritarianism and repression in defence of a market-governed state as "fascism" and so forth, a tendency echoed to accepted to mildly eschewed across the broader recognised left. Indeed, 

The action itself, a rebuke of the federal government's policy of lockdown, particularly (but not most grievously) offsetting the truck drivers vital to the Canadian economy; more so than other groups less vilified, better cared for, at any rate.  

Now, let us - in the name of giving Godwin's law, in all its incarnations, a good kicking - say it out loud: This puerile son is not the rock that was the father - and the causes that forged Pierre's good speech are not those of the unfettered, prejudiced condemnation and Ceausescian oral defecation ex podio spouted like diarrhoea over the Canadian public, fittingly from a remote, even undisclosed location freed from white, softening walls. The statesman selecting not to confront "his" people, but behaving 

When the tanks rolled into Montreal, and hundreds of figures whose support for the terrorist FLQ extended to that of the (and I'm being generous to Ottawa on that account) in a move which could not have been as obviated and expunged had it occurred south of the border, 

Now, for so worse reasons, we see the same currency peddled by the same blood - if worse in every regard. Whereas Pierre Trudeau may have enjoyed significant support, and maintained power (but for the brief, almost strategically engineered interregnum of Joe Clark) for nearly one and a half decade afterwards, in elections where his opponents to left and right were given the opportunity to bash that face and act of statesmanship with this sledgehammer, and nevertheless saw re-election in polls that have hardly been called out as unfair, and where and when memory of the government's response remained strong. Never was there an attempt , let alone to call out the NDP or Progressive Conservatives out as fascists for opposing his, ostensibly, fascist policy aimed very really at quelling the independence movement - and arguably successfully, with the 1990s plebiscite as the last gasping attempt by the Quebecois. 

Now, worse for worse reasons , . This style does indeed not limit itself to the perilous questions of viral pandemics, reasonable efforts to restrict , and the "need" of a particular protest particularly aiming itself at the administation's policies (arguably, the most ). Indeed, in the last two elections, Justin has maintained himself in spite of the Tories taking a majority of the votes. 

So, how did we get here? 

The decision to cancel bank accounts - not to individuals engaged in supposed rioting, with a mind to preventing their current efforts, mind you - but against financial supporters, evoking the debate regarding  

Might Gives Right

 

The current - some would say ancient, but at least centennial - struggle for voting rights, now almost impossibly thrown into the debate over the just-as-old question of the filibuster - or so often, where parliamentary government is concerned, the threat accompanied by full regalia blazoned by an uneasily governing majority party - has been . And while the prospects of a red revival may seem distant (they sure look, in numbers and, frankly, "opposition", better than for the long 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, for the very upcoming November 2022) . And as implied by the relinquishing, as it should be said, filibuster holding back the baton of simple majoritarianism, it would - for whatever ends - spell the victory of democracy over liberal democracy. Now not only in Budapest, and other post-Communist capitals ostensibly hurling themselves and their children from Tarpeian rocks into the jaws of fascism (and not only from the lips of Democrats) but in the dreaded capital of the free world. 

And with a majority that slim, having to muster every fibre of two ostensibly centrist Democrats to govern, it can be assumed by any man not giving complete command to his senses, that the foul Reds will govern yet again... as the revolutionaries of the failed putsch of 1832 may never have said, "one day". Alas, so many put it in the phrases such as this, that should the Republicans recapture either the Congress or the White House, either civil war or authoritarian rule will emerge, conceivably both in rapid succession or multitudes. Unfortunate because when such predictions are made, even with due substance, or partial and reeking substance, the saged-by-example breakdown of the serious, main, democratic parties are sure to continue. (The Reichstag fire analogy is apt, I would say, or more so than the events at the Bürgerbräukeller which did signal an attempted coup... by the Bavarian government!) And as that process continues, the tactic of blaming every move by the other side as one perpetuating aggression is one only demanding a mirror to the face, or in the head, and just as graceful. 

Fire and ashes could not quell the machinations of the Reichstag; only as the body, intact but for the extremists most obviously bearing the responsibility now quelled, reassembled could the institution be rendered a mere humiliating boondoggle for fellow travellers of the new order.  

With the Democrats then firmly - by the skin of the proverbial horse's teeth - in an elephant-reeking saddle, presumably for another salient two years (remember 2009 through 2011?) and we presume the logical desire would be to attempt to perpetuate this state. And while the early Obama years offered something like, yes, a promise - comparable even to the days of mighty Camelot - the promise of Biden is naught but the shadowy attempt, or attempt at an attempt, to be an undoer, a "healer" - two laudable pledges, which hardly are coherent in execution. Undoing of Trump's major or generally favoured reforms will undoubtedly herald unrest, not because the politics of undoing is inappropriate - I think the emergence of faux consensi is just as bad, and spells the dire end of democratic politics through the apocalyptic credence of now-or-never, which - mind you - never stops once the vote is tallied and the will of the people is, finally and forever, deciphered... the decisions to, in wisdom, and lash at his reputation less than he deserves, 

Few people with a brain more complex or refined in pedigree than that of Dinesh d'Souza - a curious line in the sand, as so many things concerning our public intellectuals and standard-bearers, who combine refined grit and skills of organising with supposedly sub-childishly stupid utterances and ignorances (and not merely regarding the existence of sexes and their conceivable implications) it must seem apparent the poll was, on the whole, fair and safely nestling on its pedestal, untouched - or at least untaken - by crawling fingers. Likewise, it would be very arrogant to supersede the very visible attempts by domestic actors to doctor a certain result, for a certain candidate, given either the goodness of their yet-unreplaced hearts (neoconservative or not) . I myself could not share 

Some countries, it should be noted, do put this distinction and fortification into law, not least the liberal constitution of free Germany, whose distinction between "right radical" (a rather good misnomer for Trump) and "extreme right" note the distinction between campaign, however spittle-enduring, and ban, open persecution by the most secretive and democratic of police forces in Germany, the only one tasked with the mighty task of delivering political repression. The United States, for all the unsavoury and enduring (like the Verfassungsschutz, and the great Atlantic Treaty, beyond the collapse of the Red Menace) activities of the FBI and CIA and other, more recent and blood-and-chaos-steeped and unsavourily ever-rearranging acronyms, has no such policy which could not be changed by the consensus of its governors (not the fifty, again mainly in the red) and its origins in the Enlightenment recognise no such mechanism, even as a special department in the basement of the most fringe agency. The distinction, which should well be mentioned in every mentioning of the Sixth - and the autogolpe president's own words, of "peacefully" as well as "patriotically" - is only between words and violence, which cannot - by any mind of integrity - be interchanged or substituted. But should such a distinction, between mere "radicals" and "extremists" be observed in electoral politics and, if not in constitutional law, where is it put into action? By which corporation and which elected (or unelected) decision-maker? I can only answer these hard questions by a ringing silence. Surely a coup of the kind which may have emerged in the summer of 1934 against an actual Führer which had, in much shorter time, dispensed of his loyal parliament, the federalism he never cherished, the promises to the churches whose endorsements he never feigned, would have been lovely, and at any rate ended in less bloodshed than the actual timeline of our following decade. But who, even of the blood of Atreus, is fit to make that evaluation and its appropriate ? Even in peaceful, ostensibly democracy-enhancing procedures? Surely  

Added to these efforts to "fortify" or "secure" elections that ought have been secure already last time - but not, never with regard to a particular candidate or programme - . There must be no super-agendas in the world of electoral politics. Bar, that is, the constitution, which is notably open to changes, or more so than - say - Qu'ranic incantations. 

But, I should ask in fairness, is this possible? Is the process of electoral politics a task which can be distilled, half-blindly, into a cycle of four (and, to many, two) years? Certainly, the democracies or half-democracies (with a stronger leaning towards oligarchy than is generally accepted; yet another threshold here which may not as much shock but frighten you) which count their politics in decades and generations are rightly thought of as successful indeed, and pursuing the right incentives. But is this not an indictment of those who think differently, or pursue those same goals by different means and different minds, and ought it in any way affect the designs and chances and - yes - rights of those who engage in politics outside these lofty goals? How ought we - not citizens, but foreigners ascribing to these liberal rights - react if, say, the scions of Chinese rule, or resurrected British dominionhood, in Singapore start organising and handing out leaflets to this end, and should we condemn the leadership of Singapore when their Verfassungsschutz authority respond to this challenge - with batons, not (as so successfully before) by ballots?  

Beautiful. A model, and not only to the drug-eschewing Bloombergs and Gingriches of the world? How will it seem in yet another half century? 

Given all this, it is fair to return to the question of democracy versus liberal democracy with a mind to the intentions of those who wish to use force - the legitimate force earned, or more to the point borrowed, through the anonymous voting slip - to secure the future of electoral politics or rather - let us be this fair - the outcome of such fortified processes. No vote will be taken to fortify the integrity in elections which have not been backed by both (preferably more) major parties, and with a mind to the complaints against an unusually tragic and chaotic procedure, but only for the blurring vision of an eternity, or say a generation, of single-party dominance - directly or, more humbly, through the (re)acceptance of the sacred and undeniable values of free trade, the Atlantic Treaty and free movement. We 

The Sixth....?

 

The Anglophone, or even more so American, tradition of denominating disasters by numbers and dash (and thus, in its most commonplace sense, commemorating one of the most egregious and foreboding disasters of the past century unwittingly, to an often equally oblivious Swedish audience, as 9/11; to me, it sounds unconscionably abrogated to a minuscule convenience store or gas station) has now, since a year at least, been joined by the both hotly debated and contested-as-a-debating topic now known as 1/6, marking the charge - insurrection, rebellion, possibly treason, if you will, but in my mind not reaching the goals or often very serious efforts of an attempted (is there another kind, in civilised conversation?) coup - of the Capitol in Washington, D.C, and thus denigrating the throngs expressing long-held anger against that institution, and city, by the similar political clot verbally slung against the inhabitants of the building, or previously confined to the strictly verbal. 

I should not be remiss here and outright reject the widespread, and often bland, employment of the word "coup". Whereas "coup", by the previously mentioned Hitchens, has been used against Watergate (the mother of the many -gate suffixes) and there with some rhetorical relevance - if not in an academic sense - I am not quite so contended here. The use of Beer Hall Putsch, frivolously Godwinian but not without merit, most relativisers being unaware of this turn of events (or even that fifteen years later) has also been raised, whereas its corollary - certainly over the democratic Bavarian government's attempt on German democracy as well as the Nazi plagiarisers - would be the attack on the German Reichstag an equally chilling February 1933, plus aftermath. The repression now underway, finally, makes the comparison also somewhat debunked, in reality if not in spirit. 

You can put whomever you like as Hitler in this less tantalising analogy, but the mere fact that he held the presidency - for a fortnight - does not reinforce the apparent effects, let alone the presumed downfall of American constitutionalism during this apocalyptic Trump presidency... still, I admit, a queer and frightful phrase to pen. All institutions were - adequately, for all the failings of voters, courts, electors and senate - guarding against this possibility, openly flaunting their readiness to not execute their duties, lest it be to such an end as extend this which now could not, legally, be extended, the lack of a proper mass movement in line with the SA, let alone SS, and the continued reliance not only on constitutional structures and federalism (dented, long since, but not exactly Trump's prime goal) and diversity (yes, that term) of the broader conservative movement (if it is to be called thus) are arguments that this is, if not something sui generis, something very different from the transformed Thule society now poised to subdue and destroy the Western world. Focus on his son-in-law and his tribe, or now substituting Muslims for Jews and... Brazilians, Mexicans, Haitians, for the Slavs (remember them, or the chilling intricacies rung out by the mere words Generalplan Ost?) for no particular reason. 

This last bark of the old president is now poised to be his undoing from repeating the feat of Cleveland and becoming - now that he, seemingly, recognises he is not, and cannot not steal nor lawyer himself to victory, whether this would appropriately have been waged on the irregularities which, as before, is part of any election, and certainly one so grand and stuffed with pre-election day ballots - the first president to return with vengeance, but has hardly chipped his already-condemned status. Cleveland was booted, surely not without some irregularity (if not, proved before court, not mentioning the widespread practices of the South firmly holding his back) and resurged in success. The cries that now, now, his visage must not be seen again at the walk to the Oval Office, lest the world be plummeting, cannot be taken seriously than those before it. This must not be, shriek the trumpets from much of the political establishment, and major corporations which have not - in his hour of need - come to this fascist's aid. However, just as the first the , the second should not be discounted from being another dent in the shining castle of electoral democracy, which cannot long bear the brunt of political crimes (even those which, in truth, be considered criminal) when aimed firmly at one side, and wielded as a hose to blot out and silence their vandals, but not so much others. And this time, now, irrevocably, undeniably, his is the glory and gasp of having officiated, if not outright orchestrated, a vicious attack on the other branch of government. Only the assault on the Supreme Court and the Nine not occurring - nor likely to occur soon, lest Democrats (big D, folks!) are to respond in kind, would have made the autocratic tendencies clearer. 

Are these tendencies without real merit, without real ambition? Well, apart from "self-confidence", enough to adequate to that of a Targaryen, no flatter adequately satisfies The Donald's persona better than "ambition", although I find the description a bit short. What ambition? Which desires has he not already fulfilled? And if someone, including myself, and many vociferous unshakeable Trump critics, have decried his run as a joke turning into a reality and then into nightmare, rhyming poorly with the star-gazing, fate-driven, youthfully certain Caesar or Temüjin or other figure content only with the greatest of ambition. Indeed, even for one poised to laugh and mutter gall-laden content at that announcement, his own review of the presidency were stark and Martin-esque indeed. 

But it is for the grander question of what will come out of this, and the future of the institutions now assaulted by a president, by one man, now presumably clear of him (?), or so many of them may think, that I wish to speak. For the enemies of an autocrat seldom uphold credible democratic credentials, and this tyrant - in the classical sense - has, as his forbearers, arisen not through a firm and healthy liberal democracy, but against one in decay.* 

There is, most certainly, a consensus a healthy - meaning somewhat breathing - two-party system. And surely, if not in print or outspoken, a desire for the Trump phenomenon - if not the broader "Kekist movement" - to just go away, preferably in a gurgle- and defecation-inducing stroke so very long heralded, or even by an assassin's bullet, or blade, or novichok-laced coke (no chance there, more than one with rum). But will this ? The clear message from the second impeachment - presided over by the Batman-seasoned Senator Leahy himself - was clear as no water has been; the loud never-Trumpers remain, and clear as the majority being against Trump well before the charges pertained to were charged, committed or imagined, but no large chunk of Republicans and no auspicious names, save that of already declared opponent and candidate Romney (now of Utah) said clearly no, if with the somewhat better excuse of the object of their ire being, for the moment, no longer an occupant of the office from which he should be expelled. Whereas no (firm) evidence suggest one cannot do such a thing, the only proposed purpose - the language or symbolism of doing so anyway, because - of disbarring (the "dis" not amounting to a Bush-ism; remember him and why he should be impeached?) this most undesired - by much of Washington, not of the country - from even announcing yet another run, and the just as unspoken but more chilling belief that this would not be employed against another, far from announced candidate in the future, was bad enough, and in a sense took this plummet of decorum to levels not seen with the 2019 impeachment (and, let's be fair, more predictable) 2020 acquittal. The fact that Trump has plummeted, whether that happened in 2020 or before or even in 2016, is quite beside that point. For these institutions will endure longer than Trump, lest you truly believe in the Trumpocalypse, in which case I propose sudden, and very real, emigration. More dismaying than the failed impeachment - but for this obvious statement on its absurdity, I would surely would have favoured it - is the effects that outside of him will change the landscape of American democracy so far as to make them unrecognisable. 

Most of all, the age-old (millennia, if you discount the unspoken condition "American constitutionalism") question of the filibuster is now, displeasingly given the apparent divisions in electorate as well as parties, taken to the next level; now, a slim majority of not even fifty-one must govern, lest the forces . The apocalyptic . As already, more predictably, shouted from across the aisle, with less grace than gratitude, the promise of a filibuster gone in favour of simple majoritarianism (yay, said no thinking person desiring this state of affairs to be replaced by stable consensus and democratic institutionalism) which only bodes for further downfall, once the regained speaker's chair by a god-fearing vice president (possibly not Mr. Pence of the 1/6 events), and possibly the generally recognised speaker's chair too, and even the West Wing... could it be possible? Well, could it be possible for the auspiciously separatist, racist, and often Ku Klux Klan-touting Democrats from retaking the White House ? Only those living so long as to see the auspiciously doomed, pre-fascist (or proto-fascist? Which prefix would do?) year of 1884 (I shall not subvert American democracy by breathing 1876, even to the figure seven) will surely see. 

What then will come out of this? The prime desire, just as during impeachment, of overturning the cart arraigned against the politics of decency, that is, of certain unalterable truths or policies not shared at all by all the voters, if even half of them, will most surely fail, for like with assassination, the only thing coming out of a political trial - I have, if not out of sympathy with Trump, hard to see it as anything else, and shadow in this case of that counts for posture - 

It would do well thus to recall Mr. Fawlty's words on the fish, and of the American democracy of Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and others being well and by margin unfit for consumption, and the causes for this not solely resting with the over-aged, overtly aggressively heterosexual, and other things, braggart the Republican party and - at the core of this - their electorate has made its beacon and guiding pilot. The designs now imposed, upon an hour , or even glanced at and championed, would surely hasten or consummate (let us say) the decline of the institutions whose destruction Trump's presence were considered synonymous with. American democracy still lives, admittedly, due to these institutions still relished in name if not always, or often, in spirit enduring throughout a time where there was real, intense pressure (as there had been before) just as they did thirteen months ago - no resuscitation. On that note, let us hold it, and consider whether razing the decidedly guiding democracy of the West (India being by far greater, but even now less consequential) for the purpose of the death, political or otherwise, of a seventy-five year old man once, and future, labeled president. For those who seek to perpetuate not the union pledged by Madison et al, heralded by Lincoln and King, as of yet in progress, but sacrifice it for a design better fitting their earthly ends, with the excuse of this man being chained to the pyre, must surely be recognised as arsonists of democracy indeed. 

* = Tyrannos, tyrant, being the appropriate term, I think... if yet indicting, beyond Trump, the Athens which spawned him  ;-)