Essays in Idleness

There are two candidates for President of a neighbouring country, which will have a general election in six weeks and one day. They are, “Trump,” and “Not Trump,” respectively. There is tremendous enthusiasm for both candidates, though only one of them is a living biological entity. There may be others running — a rumour says one of them is named “Joe Biden” — but no one cares about the “also rans.”

Should “Trump” be elected, there will be violence and chaos. Should “Not Trump” be selected instead, there will be chaos and violence. This will increase the longer it takes to reach a definitive result, which, given the existence of some tens of millions of eminently disputable “mail-in” ballots, could take several years. The candidate, “Not Trump,” has been indicating that he will not accept the result if he loses. He accuses the other candidate, “Trump” (who is incidentally the incumbent), of secretly intending the same, and says the military should be ready to remove him. This used to be called, “high treason.”

While one candidate is associated with numerous specific policies, the other is quite vague. This may have something to do with his not really existing — except in the imaginations of the deranged. The opposite of what “Trump” says or has been doing, is promised, but this produces policies that cannot be coherent. Were I a Merican elector, I might vote for the negation of a negation, on the principle that two negatives makes a positive. I would describe myself as “Not ‘Not Trump’.”

This, while I oppose almost all of “Trump’s” policies — although not necessarily in their contexts. For instance, even I would call the zapper robots, on a criminal mob; possibly with even more alacrity. However, I wouldn’t be so willing to spread cash around, to strangers.

Frankly, I think “Trump” is a spendthrift liberal, and dangerous because he’s a fairly honest man. While I’m not an opponent of the rule of law, which he seems to favour, he accepts massive intervention by the state, which has been consistently counter-productive, not only recently, but through all time. I would recommend that “Trump” take counselling from me, on how to do nothing. A great deal of trouble is created by politicians, who feel neurotically compelled to take action of some sort, after foolishly listening to “do something” counsellors.

But even were he to come round, I fear he has done too much already, and thus inspired his opponents to do the opposite, to our perdition. Let us take the “Batflu crisis” as an isolated example. His predecessor had much more success with Red Chinese viruses by doing almost nothing about them. It is seldom that I praise Mr Barack Hussein Obama, so delight in the opportunity to make exceptions. I admire him for many things he didn’t do; or was stopped from doing. Though from the things he did, he made “Trump” inevitable.

I have many friends in the Natted States, and feel sorry for them. But not, perhaps, as much as I feel sorry for myself, just having to watch, and in view of the fact that we have poorly defended borders. I cannot currently foresee that any of this will end well. I’m almost beyond blaming individuals, or even democracy, which gave vast hordes of irresponsible people not only the right to vote, but encouraged them to try it.

By the time this is over — probably a long time off — many even of them may wish to return to the only political system that works. I refer, of course, to hereditary monarchy. Yet even that fails, sometimes, when nature provides us with a monster, and his aides are unable to contrive a riding accident for him. For symbolic individuals can be useful, but we also need a stable, theocratic order, in which morality may be loose or tight, but what it is won’t be frivolously debated.

Perhaps this is enough for a short Idlepost.