Subterms
Opinion
Donald Trump
Charisma trumps character in modern politics
Brigid Delaney
The ancient Stoics believed nothing was more important than good character. They would be aghast at our leaders in 2020 More
Ever since the pioneering Kennedy-Nixon encounter in 1960, the questions that political journalists pose after US presidential debates have been the same. Who performed best? Who had the better of this or that part of the argument? Who exceeded expectations or fell short? Who had the best lines and delivered the best zinger? And has any of it changed the election odds?They are still being asked after the first televised match-up between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. With five weeks to go before the US votes, the questions still matter. But after Tuesday’s verbal roughhouse they also feel crowded out by other uncertainties that seem more epochal, more dystopian and more pressing, not least when seen from this side of the Atlantic.It can seem overblown, but it now makes sense to ask if America is on the edge of becoming ungovernable, or if the rule of impartial law enforcement still commands respect. It is also possible, in ways that were not true in the past, to consider whether the US can be relied on internationally, and whether it is realistic to continue to regard it as an ally. But if it is not an ally, what follows from that? The answers are increasingly uncomfortable.Perhaps most potently, it has to be asked whether America, with all its fabulous energy, wealth, liberty and ambition, still offers the inspirational model to the world that it did to so many, for so long. Or instead is today’s America, defined increasingly by its inequalities, violence, fundamentalism and racism, becoming a model to be rejected, to be guarded against and even, in some cases, to be resisted?Sober answers to these questions matter to the whole planet, above all because of climate change and amid the coronavirus pandemic. But they matter to Britain in very particular ways too. The UK’s claim to a special relationship with the United States has been the cornerstone of its view of itself in the world ever since 1945. A deference to, and infatuation with, America also runs deep in our culture. But if the US is changing in an increasingly dangerous fashion, where does that leave that foreign policy or that infatuation?Britain has a lot riding on getting the answer right. Coming at precisely the time when the UK is casting off its alliance with its own continent, the issue has special urgency. Back in 2016, when Britain voted to leave the European Union, the allure of the exit for many leavers rested partly on the apparent dependability of the transatlantic alliance. But that was pre-Trump. America is a different place and becoming more so. Even leavers should sometimes ask what exactly this wheel of fire is on to which they are binding themselves.Fundamentally, the credibility of any alliance, whether with Europe, the US or anyone else, rests on material self-interest over things such as trade and security. But these material issues are also oiled by common values and trust, without which the relationship remains brittle and pragmatic. The bigger ally will always call the shots. And Britain is not the bigger ally.Few of these values matter as much as respect for the rule of law. It is not difficult to list ways in which this has been undermined by Trump’s America. The list would include everything from the president’s tax returns to breaches of international treaties. The danger for Britain is that, in defence of its unequal alliance, it is beginning to follow the US down the same route of playing fast and loose with the law for political reasons.Take one hugely significant example. Trump and the Republican senate leadership are trying to install the conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett in place of the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the US supreme court before the presidential election on 3 November. This is a wholly political act. But it is not new. It is merely a particularly shameless step in a long history of politically shaped justice in the US.In the long term, the Barrett nomination is aimed at creating a conservative 6-3 majority in the court, which may then start to undo abortion and other civil rights. But the overriding and immediate purpose is to construct a court that may rule on the result of the November election itself. If that were to happen, and if the court awarded the disputed election to Trump, the politicisation of American justice would be complete.In Britain, judges are still selected on the basis of their legal qualifications, not their politics. Even if you know the identity of the current UK supreme court president, which most people will not, it is a fair bet that you don’t know whether Lord Reed can be classified as a liberal jurist or a conservative one. We are better off as a country for that. Judges should neither be cult figures, as Ginsburg became for some American liberals; or hate figures, as she was for conservatives.Seen against the backdrop of a divided America facing the Barrett nomination, Britain’s institutions may still seem gratifyingly independent and resilient. But for how long? The Johnson government’s purge of senior civil servants, and its plan to install conservative ideologues to govern the BBC and the independent regulators, are a declaration of war on pluralism and independence. If the United States continues its slide into culture wars and worse, the task of stopping this from dragging Britain down too will become increasingly urgent.•Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist More
Boris Johnson will announce a 30% increase in the UK’s funding of the World Health Organization, making the UK the single largest national donor after the US leaves.In an announcement at the UN General Assembly, he will urge it to heal “the ugly rifts” that are damaging the international fight against coronavirus.While Trump has denounced the WHO as corrupt and under China’s influence, Johnson will announce £340m in UK funding over the next four years, a 30% increase. He will also suggest the body be given greater powers to demand reports on how countries are handling a pandemic.The proposals will form part of a British vision, drawn up in conjunction with the Gates Foundation, of how future health pandemics could be better controlled, including “zoonotic labs” capable of identifying potentially dangerous pathogens in animals before they transmit to humans.Johnson’s pre-recorded video, on the final main day of the UN General Assembly and four days after most world leaders have spoken, comes at the end of a week in which China and the US have argued over responsibility for the virus. Both have refused to join the WHO effort to find a global coronavirus vaccine, preferring a national approach.Johnson will say: “After nine months of fighting Covid, the very notion of the international community looks tattered. We know that we cannot continue in this way. Unless we unite and turn our fire against our common foe, we know that everyone will lose.“Now is the time therefore – here at what I devoutly hope will be the first and last ever Zoom UNGA – for humanity to reach across borders and repair these ugly rifts. Here in the UK, the birthplace of Edward Jenner who pioneered the world’s first vaccine, we are determined to do everything in our power to work with our friends across the UN to heal those divisions and to heal the world.”Earlier at the UN this week, he said that the coronavirus “came out of left field, humanity was caught napping, let’s face it, we were woefully underprepared”.The extra UK cash comes ahead of WHO board meeting next week at which a joint Franco-German paper is to be discussed calling for more reliable, larger and less conditional funding of the WHO.The UK contribution will be set at £340m over the next four years, making it the most generous nation state contributor, Downing Street said. While the US is currently the largest funder, if Trump is re-elected president, it will pull out by next summer, taking with it as much as $900m in voluntary and compulsory contributions over two years.Apart from funding increases designed to help multilateral bodies and ensure equitable distribution of a coronavirus vaccine, once it is discovered, Johnson will also call for new pandemic early-warning systems, new global protocols for health crises and the removal of trade barriers.The WHO has set up an internal inquiry into its handling of the pandemic, including China’s role in informing the WHO that the virus was on the loose in the country.Johnson will also use his address to announce significant new investment in Covax, the international coronavirus vaccines procurement pool announced in April. The UK will contribute an initial £71m to secure purchase rights for up to 27m vaccine doses for the UK. He will also announce £500m in aid funding for the Covax advance market commitment, a facility to help 92 of the world’s poorest countries access any coronavirus vaccine at the earliest opportunity. The commitment is also designed to guarantee to private manufacturers that they will have a market for their vaccines, ensuring the necessary research and development takes place. Neither China nor the US have agreed to join Covax, preferring to keep their vaccine research under their own control.Johnson will use his UN speech to call for “a vast expansion of our ability to collect and analyse samples and distribute the findings, using health data-sharing agreements covering every country”.His speech contains no direct criticism of China’s sharing of data at the beginning of the crisis, Downing Street said. More
As the United States’ coronavirus death toll edged closer to 200,000, US president Donald Trump claimed falsely at a rally in Ohio that the country’s fatality rate was “among the lowest in the world” and that the virus has “virtually” no effect on young people.Speaking in the town of Swanton, Trump said: “It affects elderly people. Elderly people with heart problems and other problems. If they have other problems that’s what it really affects, that’s it,” he claimed. “You know in some states, thousands of people – nobody young.”“Take your hat off to the young, because they have a hell of an immune system. But it affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing. By the way, open your schools.”Trump also claimed that the United States had “among the lowest case-fatality rates of any country in the world.” The US ranks 53rd highest out of 195 countries in the world with a case-fatality rate of 2.9%, according to Johns Hopkins University. It is the 11th worst on deaths per 100,000 people, at 60.98.At least 199,815 Americans are known to have died since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins, which relies on official government data. With the worst death toll in the world, the US accounts for one in five coronavirus-related fatalities worldwide. Just under one in every 1,600 Americans has died in the pandemic.In August, the World Health Organization warned that young people were becoming the primary drivers of the spread of coronavirus in many countries.Meanwhile, in Europe, stocks posted their worst fall in three months on Monday as fears of a second wave hit travel and leisure shares, while banks tumbled on reports of about $2tn-worth of potentially suspect transfers by leading lenders. Pubs, bars and restaurants in England will have to shut by 10pm from Thursday under new nationwide restrictions to halt an “exponential” rise in coronavirus cases.Boris Johnson is expected to make an address to the nation on Tuesday setting out the new measures. With cases doubling every week across the UK and a second wave expected to last up to six months, health officials are said to have advised the government over the weekend to “move hard and fast”. There could be up to 50,000 new coronavirus cases a day in Britain by the middle of October if the pandemic continues at its current pace, the country’s chief scientific adviser warned. Scotland is also expected to announce new restrictions on Tuesday.The Czech Republic prime minister, Andrej Babis, admitted on Monday that his government had made a mistake when it eased restrictions over the summer. “Even I got carried away by the coming summer and the general mood. That was a mistake I don’t want to make again,” the billionaire populist said in a televised speech.After fending off much of the pandemic earlier in the year with timely steps, including mandatory face masks outdoors, the government lifted most measures before the summer holidays.The Czech Republic registered a record high of 3,130 coronavirus cases on Thursday last week, almost matching the total for the whole of March, although testing capacity was low at the start of the pandemic.In other developments:There are 31.2m coronavirus cases worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins, and 963,068 people have died over the course of the pandemic so far.
New Zealand recorded no new cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday, as restrictions on much of the country were entirely removed, and measures imposed on Auckland, the largest city, were due to ease further. There was no recorded community spread of the virus in the rest of New Zealand, where the government has now lifted all physical distancing restrictions and limits on gatherings.
Mexico surpassed 700,000 confirmed cases on Monday after the health ministry reported 2,917 new confirmed cases in the Latin American country, bringing the total to 700,580 as well as a cumulative death toll of 73,697. More
The Succession creator, Jesse Armstrong, used his Emmy acceptance speech to attack Boris Johnson and Donald Trump for their “crummy” response to coronavirus, and also the media moguls who do so much to keep them in power.Armstrong’s HBO show, telling the story of a billionaire media tycoon and his dysfunctional, warring family, was one of the big winners at the ceremony on Sunday. It won seven awards, including outstanding drama, which Armstrong accepted from a hotel room in London.He said it was sad not to be able to share the success with colleagues in the US. “Being robbed of the opportunity to spend time with our peers, maybe I’d like to do a couple of un-thankyous,” he said.“Un-thankyou to the virus, for keeping us all apart this year. Un-thankyou to President Trump for his crummy and uncoordinated response. Un-thankyou to Boris Johnson and his government for doing the same in my country.“Un-thankyou to all the nationalist and quasi-nationalist governments in the world who are exactly the opposite of what we need right now. And un-thankyou to the media moguls who do so much to keep them in power. So un-thankyou!”Armstrong is one of Britain’s most celebrated comedy writers, having co-created Peep Show and Fresh Meat in the UK as well as having been on the writing team for The Thick of It.Succession’s seven wins came from 18 nominations and included the best actor award for Jeremy Strong, who plays the eldest son, Kendall Roy. His success meant that Brian Cox, who plays the patriarch and was nominated in the same category, missed out on a prize that bookmakers had made him odds-on to win.Cox was one of many British and Irish actors to miss out. Olivia Colman (The Crown) and Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) were thwarted in their category when Zendaya made history by becoming the youngest person to win in the best actress drama lead category for Euphoria.Also missing out were Helena Bonham Carter (The Crown), Fiona Shaw (Killing Eve), Matthew Macfadyen (Succession), Harriet Walter (Succession), Jeremy Irons (Watchmen), Paul Mescal (Normal People), Andrew Scott (Black Mirror), Dev Patel (Modern Love) and Phoebe Waller-Bridge for her guest appearance on Saturday Night Live.Aside from Succession the big winners were HBO’s Watchmen, shown in the UK on Sky Atlantic, and the Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek, which, since it went on Netflix, has steadily and quietly become a huge feelgood hit. The sixth and final season of the show swept the board in the comedy categories, a feat not even achieved by shows such as Frasier and Modern Family.It won seven Emmys with acting wins for the show’s stars Eugene Levy, Dan Levy, Catherine O’Hara and Annie Murphy. Appearing in the ceremony’s virtual backstage area Dan Levy, its co-creator and showrunner, discussed the possibility of Schitt’s Creek returning as a movie.“Here’s the thing – some people have been asking that,” he said. “If there is an idea that pops into my head and worthy of these wonderful people, it has to be really freaking good at this point.”Other winners included Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the Birmingham-born writer and comedian who started out on the UK standup circuit before achieving success in the US.RuPaul’s Drag Race, which has spawned a Bafta-nominated British version on the BBC, won the reality competition award.The virtual awards ceremony, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel – “welcome to the Pandemmys” – will go down as one of the oddest in the Emmys’ 72-year history with prizes delivered to winners, often in their homes, by people in hazmat tuxedos.The dress code was “come as you are”, with the suggested option of designer pyjamas. Hardly any of the stars went down that route, although Jane Lynch, in a very smart top, revealed she was also wearing sweatpants.A number of actors used the event to express support for the Black Lives Matter movement, including Regina King, who won the limited series lead actress award for Watchmen. She wore a T-shirt that honoured the police shooting victim Breonna Taylor and used her speech to remind people of the importance of voting.Later she explained why wearing the T-shirt was important. “The cops still haven’t been held accountable,” she said.“She represents just decades, hundreds of years of violence against Black bodies. Wearing Breonna’s likeness and representing her and her family and the stories that we were exploring, presenting and holding a mirror up to on Watchmen, it felt appropriate to represent with Breonna Taylor.” More
David Cameron
Former PM also obliquely chastises Boris Johnson for missing coronavirus meetings More
The Guardian offered its readers what is certainly the most comic and hyperreal sentence of the week when it reported that “Boris Johnson accused the EU of preparing to go to ‘extreme and unreasonable lengths’ in Brexit talks as he defended breaching international law amid a mounting rebellion from Tory backbenchers.”
Here is today’s 3D definition:
Go to extreme and unreasonable lengths:
An expression that those who habitually go to extreme and unreasonable lengths in everything they do like to apply to those who oppose any of their extremely unreasonable acts
Contextual Note
We live in an era in which extreme and unreasonable discourse and action have become the most reliable tool for those seeking political, economic or social success. It explains how purveyors of extreme and unreasonable discourse have won recent elections in nations as diverse as the US, the UK, India, the Philippines and Brazil, to mention only those countries.
The Tug of War in Washington Around the War in Afghanistan
READ MORE
Whether their names are Johnson, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Silvio Berlusconi, Rodrigo Duterte, Elon Musk or Kanye West, each in his own patented way has perfected the art of outrageous hyperreality that thrives on projecting a personality that is extreme and unreasonable. The phenomenon goes beyond politics. In fact, it originates in the world of entertainment. West, an American rapper, did as much to inspire President Trump’s approach to politics as Trump did to convince West he could have a future in politics.
The Guardian’s readers may be left wondering what kind of exceptionally outrageous behavior could merit Johnson, the British prime minister, calling European negotiators’ behavior “extreme and unreasonable.” Even during his career as a journalist before moving into politics, Johnson specialized in extreme and unreasonable exaggeration in his reporting of the news.
In 2016, Johnson also went from the extreme of preparing an article for publication in The Telegraph in which he argued in favor of Britain remaining in Europe and warned that leaving the EU would provoke an “economic shock,” to leading the wing of the Conservative Party in the “leave” campaign for Brexit. That permitted him to identify himself with the cause of Brexit and assume the leadership of that faction of a party officially committed to remaining as a member of the European Union. He sensed that it would be the shortest route to Downing Street as he witnessed the wavering fortunes of David Cameron, the prime minister at the time.
Embed from Getty Images
So, what terribly extreme and unreasonable actions are the Europeans guilty of in Johnson’s eyes? Very simply, they disapprove of his proposed “internal market bill,” which calls for unilaterally overturning the withdrawal agreement Johnson signed last year to presumably settle the initial political conditions of the UK leaving the European Union. On Johnson’s own initiative, that agreement drew a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, which together make up the United Kingdom.
The law he is now proposing would permit him to effectively erase that border, leading to the necessity of creating a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Keeping that border open as provided by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement — a deal that ended the violence between Catholics and Protestants — was the required condition for reaching any kind of permanent solution to the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union.
Now, key members of Johnson’s cabinet have begun to revolt, as this is a clear violation of the terms of the withdrawal agreement that took so long to hammer out. Britain’s former ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, now points out that the bill will be “hugely damaging to our international reputation.” He warned that “it could deter other countries from entering into agreements with the UK in the future.” He wasn’t alone. Five former British prime ministers have also expressed concern over the move. Darroch speculated on what might happen “if people think the Brits are just going to say: we didn’t like this on reflection, and we would like to rewrite this part unilaterally.”
Historical Note
During the centuries when the British dominated the world and owned an empire on which the sun never set, as a people they acquired the reputation of being committed to “fair play.” The French, who never had an entente with the British that was deeper than merely cordial, to this day identify the British as a people who want to be respected for maintaining the cultural value of fair play, at least as it applies to sports.
The French have never been naive. They have always recognized that their British neighbors were perfectly capable of perfidy. To this day, the French will ironically trot out the expression “perfide Albion” to explain Britain’s positions concerning other nations. But Albion’s traditional perfidy was always subtle, carrying an air of reasonableness and delivered with what appeared to be a complicit smile. Boris Johnson’s is both extreme and unreasonable.
Empires will always be suspected of perfidy, if only because everyone understands that they can, on a whim, betray treaties and agreements — and even their own stated principles and values — as they rely on their military prowess and financial clout to carry them through. To some extent, this becomes the law of empires, their way of indicating that the countries they deal with have a greater interest in being nice to them than they do in being nice to the others.
The irony this time — and some see it as a tragedy — lies in the fact that Britain hasn’t been an empire for at least 70 years. Johnson has become little more than Shakespeare’s “poor player who struts and frets his hour upon a stage” and someday soon will be heard no more. The burning question, when it comes to Johnson, Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump — whose exit may be announced in November — is this: What will the damaged landscape look like when those leaders specialized in upending their own cultures are gone?
As the world breathlessly awaits the major events that affect every nation in the world — starting with the US presidential election in November and including the unabating drama of the waxing and waning of hopes to see the end of the COVID-19 pandemic — the British have the added angst of speculating about just how irreparably damaging what appears to be an inevitable “hard Brexit” on January 1, 2021, is likely to be. One thing seems to be sure: it will be both extreme and unreasonable.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
Book of the day
Politics books
The former British ambassador to the US is wry and astute in his account of how he fell foul of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson More
