Trumpster in the Dumpster

That's right, you can kiss my hairy arse!  (I hasten to add that that isn't my hairy arse above, merely a surrogate).  And yes, I'm targeting Trump's supporters here, as much as the fat boy himself - I have grown so sick of their smug sanctimoniousness over the past four years.  Always trying to take the moral high ground, despite being morally bankrupt themselves.  How well I remember their recent demands that the rest of us utterly condemn all that alleged Antifa and Black Lives Matter violence for being the unconstitutional attempts to undermine democracy that they were.  Strangely though, I've heard nothing from them condemning Trump for his baseless allegations of electoral fraud for being unconstitutional attempts to undermine the integrity of the US democratic system that they undoubtedly are.  I'm still waiting to see my social media feeds fill up with their condemnations, yet they remain silent.

But hey, who cares?  The Trumpster is in the Dumpster.  America has heeded the call to 'Dump the Trump'.  Biden has given him a hidin'.  You know, when I thought up all of those potential campaign slogans, I thought that I was on fire - it was just unfortunate that I devised them after election day, so couldn't sell them to the Biden campaign.  I know that they always say that you shouldn't descend to level of your adversary, but you know what, I'm more than happy to come down to Trump's level of childish name calling.  It is highly satisfying after having to witness four years of this psychopath trampling all over decent behavioural norms, insulting people, lying, cheating, being racist,trashing all that is good about the US and just generally being a boorish oaf, while his supporters all cheered him on, taking their cue from him to be utterly obnoxious pricks.

But, I hear those Trumpists ask,what the fuck has it to do with some guy in the UK?  Well, the occupant of the Oval Office, I'm afraid, impacts the whole world.  So when we have a neo-fascist arsehole like Trump there, we all suffer.  We are all in danger.  The US president, more often than not, sets the tone for international discourse and, for the past four years, that tone has been ignorant, bigoted, confrontational and angry.  Let's hope that under Biden, we can get back to some decency and constructive diplomacy, with the US offering some proper global leadership in areas like climate change.  Beyond these concerns, his fall is hugely symbolic - hopefully, it represents the a turning point in the fight against the blight of right-wing populism.  Perhaps Bolsanaro in Brazil might be the next to go, or perhaps Johnson here in the UK?  I live in hope.

I have to say, the US election this year has had me transfixed.  I've spent what feels like every waking hour over the past few days in front of TV news channels, or poring over political websites.  It has been a real roller coaster ride.  Despite  taking on board the warning from pollsters like Nate Silver that, due to the unprecedented level of postal voting by Democrats, things might, initially, look as if they were going Trump's way, but once the postal votes were counted, it would swing decisively to Biden, I confess that I lost faith for a while.  I had a long dark night of the soul that first night of ballot counting.  But I should have listened - as the days moved on, so those swing states gradually turned blue for Biden.  An observation here - as pointed out by various commentators, the idea that the election became a horse race of sorts, with Biden 'catching up' with Trump in states like Pennsylvania was entirely illusory - an illusion created by the way in which the ballots were counted, with the predominantly Democratic postal votes left to last.  These votes didn't just 'appear' (as Trump would have you believe), they had been there since polling day.  They just hadn't been counted.  The reality, of course, is that Biden had actually won the election by close of play on election day, it just took time to count the ballots.  Anyway, this has all been tremendously exciting for me - I used to teach US politics (and might again in the foreseeable future), so I felt something of a connection.

Some random musings to wrap up with - just how satisfying was it to see Trump buddy Nigel Farage make an utter arse of himself with his prediction of a Trump win during his fawning on stage appearance with Orange Man?  Even better, he allegedly had a £10,000 bet riding on a Trump triumph!  Ha!  That'll teach the fucker!  Then there was that British 'banker' who put £5 million on Trump to win.  Again - ha!  You know, normally I take no pleasure in seeing somebody brought low, humiliated by defeat - I've been there myself, so I know how it feels to have your world kicked out from under you.  But, for Trump, I make an exception.  He has demeaned the office of President, bringing it into disrepute with his conduct - conduct which also has encouraged and enabled an army of bigots and thugs to believe that they had free reign to terrorise minorities. While Joe Biden wouldn't have been my first choice to carry the anti-Trump flag into battle, he has prevailed and I sincerely hope that he can bring some integrity, decency and tolerance back to the White House.

By the way, has anyone told Putin yet that his bitch is toast?