Wow! I completely misread the room on that one. Mind you, in my defence, I wasn’t actually in the room. Frankly, the room was too far away for me to even listen at the door and I only had news clips and reports to go off.
The room was America, and I was in Australia, safe and secure and a little smug about the whole thing. I was convinced, given the gaffes and the gaslighting and the general level of Grand Guignol on display, that there was no way on God’s green earth he was going to win. But then I thought that too in 2016 and was proved resoundingly wrong.
Why the hell did I trust those clearly biased instincts again? Was it because I’d convinced myself he’d frayed his base since then and things would be even more perilous for him than in 2020?
After all, he was a well-known quantity now: a fulminating blowhard with neither dignity nor shame; a cry-baby idiot who knew nothing worthwhile about anything, least of all his limitations; a pompous, inarticulate, opportunistic, grifting windbag; a liar, a cheat, a moral and, on a number of occasions, actual bankrupt; a felon several times over; a fire-and-Fred Flintstone carnival-barking Florida real estate salesman playing to, it turns out, not so much the lowest but the largest common denominators of aspiration and greed.
For most who voted, these rank deficiencies simply did not exist — or didn’t matter. Or they weren’t deficiencies at all but admirable qualities that instilled confidence and devotion. Any way you cut it, I was as wrong as wrong could be and his boosters had been right to have been so confident of victory. Even Senator Deej Babet had been vindicated. Ye Gods.
I will never trust my instincts again, nor be so dismissive of people I previously considered fools and simpletons. After all, maybe it was I who was both fool and simpleton. I’m not saying I’m wrong about what I think and believe, or that I’ll betray my principles any time soon. What I’m saying is I’m in the minority. In a battle that is often binary and about barracking rather than holding anyone to account, perhaps we shouldn’t be so intolerant of someone wanting to express a contrary point of view. It may well be wrong-headed, but no-one appreciates being laughed off and sniggered at!
Of course, I’m a so-called comedian and don’t tend to take any of what’s happening in the world all that seriously. Politics, especially. But some folk aren’t in the mood for jokes about things they believe in, particularly when they’re at the expense of something or someone they’ve imbued with a pulsating messianic glow and are convinced will deliver them from the evils of the deep state and whatever else it is preventing them from being rich and beautiful like the stars on TV.
In real life, though, I shouldn’t be as snotty as that. Nor should I be condescending about their simple, home-spun and uneducated ways. They can’t help being ignorant, and who am I to say they are and whose fault it is they can’t see it. Same with willful stupidity. I need to get my head out of the clouds (or very likely, my arse), get down off my nose-bleedingly high horse, and fall down the steps of my ivory tower so I can rub shoulders with the great unwashed and largely unvaccinated hoi polloi (I’ve probably been wrong about Ivermectin too).
People are people and deserve respect no matter how easily duped they are by ruthless demagogues. History will bear me out here. Look at Cleon of Athens. Yes, he was a big, fat idiot, but he was very popular and the people voted him in as ruler. Why? Because he appealed to their venal desires and bigotry, demonised out-groups and promised to put to death all the adult males in the capital city of Lesbos.
These references would obviously mean nothing to the morons invested in the myth of MAGA — or at least that’s what my own rampant prejudice tells me. I have been an armchair centrist for far too long. Going forward (God, I hate that expression), I vow to listen with an open heart to those with whom I assume I have next to nothing in common.
For at the end of the day and through the glass darkly and into the long goodnight, we have in common our shared humanity. None of us are immune to human frailty and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, nor are we beyond redemption and the warm embrace of forgiveness to the bosom of those to whom we would formerly not have given the time of day, lest they strike us to the ground and very probably steal our watch.
There in the twilight cold and grey,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell like a falling star,
Excelsior!
