Many on this side of the Atlantic looked on aghast
as Trump threw sensible environmental policies and then humane policies such as
DACA out of the Oval Office window. DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals) protected young people whose parents took them to America without
documentation but who have known no other home. The consensus among the
sentient is that it is simply because these policies were introduced
by President Obama that Trump is obsessed with ditching them. But what is the
explanation this side of the pond?
In April 2016 in Britain, The Dubs Amendment offered
sanctuary to thousands of migrant children at risk of starvation, exploitation,
rape, death. Earlier this year the lifeline was cut. In the heat of Brexit
xenophobia, that decision was overturned against the wishes of huge swathes of
the British public and there was not so much as a backwards glance from this
shoddy government.
But the unpleasant parallels go on. It’s as if
Britain and America caught the same moral standards-wasting disease. And it’s
virulent. It’s a super bug.
Turds floated to the top of both national cesspits at
the same time. We, for example, have a racist foreign secretary (Boris
Johnson). America has an idiot for head of Education (Betsy De Vos).
In both countries the current crop of top notch nutters aren’t
even pretending that the planet matters. In a fragile island the size of the UK
the government OK’d fracking (Kirby Misperton) and OK’d open cast mining in an
area of natural beauty (Druridge Bay). The US put oil whore and climate change denier,
Scott Pruitt, in charge of the Environment Agency (see blog 220).
Racism is rampant in both countries, ratcheted up by
unhinged right-wing bullies with little or no agenda other than their own
inadequacies, trouble-making tendencies and a poor knowledge of history. We had
the murder of MP Jo Cox by an unstable white supremacist and in the US at the Charlottesville
Nazi rally, Heather Heyer was murdered by a fascist.
Blatant and extreme double standards are the order
of the day both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain it’s long been the case that
those who enjoyed elite education and send their own children to exclusive and
expensive schools, are happy to preside over cuts and failure in state education.
Those who have private health care forcefully talk about ‘streamlining’ the NHS
which is forked-tongue speak for cuts while social care is in crisis and the
disabled are losing benefits and rights faster than you can say what happened to the 2012 Olympic legacy.
In the US Trump talks about his own spoilt brats - including the one who colluded
with Russia – as “kids”. However, the youngsters losing their DACA protection
are “young adults” even though, unlike his own oily, criminal, stupid
privileged brood, the DACA young people have low levels of criminality and a 90%
employment rate.
Fuelled by short-termism and racial intolerance -
both countries seem to be missing one thing. Neither, in their obsessive
self-regard, seems to have noticed that their country’s credibility – albeit
based on (often) brute force and the reputation of history – has gone down the
pan.
There is nothing more bizarre than
listening to some stupid xenophobic blob banging on about how he/she would be
happy to welcome accountants and doctors from other countries. They seem unaware of what intelligent
people abroad will have made, over the last few months, of Britain’s show of
nastiness, selfishness, meanness, lack of regard for others and unwillingness
to play for Team Planet.
It remains to be seen what will happen now that
Trump is playing his Republican enablers off against Democratic desperation as
he did recently over the budget cap. Here, Theresa
May’s party tolerate her because they know they cannot risk rocking the
un-seaworthy boat now. The man with no morals supported by the Christian right,
the climate change denier lapping up the attention in Hurricane obliterated
Houston, the illiterate idiot, liar, cheat, embezzler is running the land of
the brave and home of the free. In the UK, Mrs jolly-hockey-sticks-May competes
with the ludicrous its-2000-and what?-Jeremy Corbyn for the title of most
deluded out-of-touch political manikin.
Meanwhile here in the UK no one but NO ONE will
admit that Brexit is a disaster. Not will
be but is. Politicians on all
sides bang on about ‘respecting the will of the people’ conveniently papering
over the huge cracks and contradictions. The elephant in the room, which is the xenophobia that drove the decision, is just being ignored like a teenager
with 2-year-old sextuplets who no one will admit was ever pregnant. They brush
aside the ill-informed nature of much of the decision making, the open lies – admitted
the day after the referendum. They waffle on about how colossal EU trade will
be replaced with ‘other’ trade in ‘other’ parts of the world. I hope they are
not thinking of Africa. After Bell Pottinger’s hideous, widely publicised and
condemned shenanigans, I cannot see UK firms being welcome there any time this
side of the next financial collapse.
But for me – there is another even stranger angle.
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