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| Nebuchadnezzar gone mad: William Blake |
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. When did we last see so much in so much dissaray? The US under Obama has now pretty clearly abdicated its longtime role as world leader. The EU seems to be coming unfastened. The world financial system is shuddering and rumours of imminent collapse are spreading. Even the Vatican, last bastion of Truth and Order, under Pope Francis seems to have lost its clarity.
In the US, things seem equally chaotic internally. The Democrats are suddenly struggling at almost the last minute to draft an acceptable candidate for president. The Republicans in congress, despite a majority in both houses, seem incapable of anything. Both the Supreme Court and the President seem to be acting in disregard of the legislature. Four years ago, few were publicly in favour of making gay marriage legal in the US. Now, it is illegal to object. Planned Parenthood has been revealed as a butchery, and yet there seems to be no general will to prosecute, or even to defund. Let's not get into Benghazi or the Iran deal; neither yet make any sense. We seem even to be past caring that they make no sense. We no longer expect sense or clarity.
There is a visible, tangible hollowness at the centre, just as Yeats perceived in 1919, when he wrote the lines that begin this post. Nobody and nothing seems to be in charge any more.
At such times, people naturally crave a man riding in on a white horse. All they care about, suddenly, is that he will be tough; that he will seem to be “in command.” Someone at last will take charge.
This, perhaps, better than anything else, explains Donald Trump. He is a symptom of system failure. Just as, in the chaos and libertinage following World War I, we got Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler.
Trump, in the event that he makes it to the presidency, may be much better than Mussolini. But he is a product of the same phenomenon, and that bodes ill. Already, he has predictably found a relatively helpless scapegoat against which to channel the general angst: illegal aliens. He will, he now says, round them all up and send them back home within two years.
Okay, this is a far remove from rounding up the Jews and sending them to gas chambers; but it is at least a disturbing echo.
The same phenomenon can probably be seen in the Bernie Sanders boom on the left. If Trump is Mussolini in miniature, Sanders is little Lenin.
From where I sit this morning, as a sandstorm blowns in from the Hijaz, killing a hundred pilgrims in Mecca, the future is not looking bright.
In the US, things seem equally chaotic internally. The Democrats are suddenly struggling at almost the last minute to draft an acceptable candidate for president. The Republicans in congress, despite a majority in both houses, seem incapable of anything. Both the Supreme Court and the President seem to be acting in disregard of the legislature. Four years ago, few were publicly in favour of making gay marriage legal in the US. Now, it is illegal to object. Planned Parenthood has been revealed as a butchery, and yet there seems to be no general will to prosecute, or even to defund. Let's not get into Benghazi or the Iran deal; neither yet make any sense. We seem even to be past caring that they make no sense. We no longer expect sense or clarity.
There is a visible, tangible hollowness at the centre, just as Yeats perceived in 1919, when he wrote the lines that begin this post. Nobody and nothing seems to be in charge any more.
At such times, people naturally crave a man riding in on a white horse. All they care about, suddenly, is that he will be tough; that he will seem to be “in command.” Someone at last will take charge.
This, perhaps, better than anything else, explains Donald Trump. He is a symptom of system failure. Just as, in the chaos and libertinage following World War I, we got Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler.
Trump, in the event that he makes it to the presidency, may be much better than Mussolini. But he is a product of the same phenomenon, and that bodes ill. Already, he has predictably found a relatively helpless scapegoat against which to channel the general angst: illegal aliens. He will, he now says, round them all up and send them back home within two years.
Okay, this is a far remove from rounding up the Jews and sending them to gas chambers; but it is at least a disturbing echo.
The same phenomenon can probably be seen in the Bernie Sanders boom on the left. If Trump is Mussolini in miniature, Sanders is little Lenin.
From where I sit this morning, as a sandstorm blowns in from the Hijaz, killing a hundred pilgrims in Mecca, the future is not looking bright.
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