LONDON LETTER NOVEMBER 2020

 BORIS JOHNSON, BONFIRE NIGHT AND

 THE PERILS OF THE  PARDON 

November is the most heavily pregnant of months, with Christmas and the new year ready to emerge from under multicoloured lights and tinsel. Already the shops are full of Christmas cards, decorations, and multiple varieties of chocolate. This year through Christmas is already overshadowed by the dark clouds of COVID-19 and economic hardship. Portobello has an unfamiliar grey feeling to it. It looks tired.

The US elections have of course, overshadowed both Halloween and, that most British of institutions, Bonfire night.

Although in recent years the latter has been increasingly overshadowed by a highly Americanised version of Halloween. Fireworks, for understandable reasons, are out of fashion whilst the idea of burning an effigy strikes, again for understandable reasons, a discordant and unappealing note these days. That said this saddens me as Bonfire night was always the big one in my childhood, with memories of sparklers baked potatoes, Catherine wheels and rockets.  Bonfire night was the last big event before Christmas.

Back, however, to the US elections. The contest threatened to go to the wire and for four interminable days we were tortured by visions of Trump hanging on. In the end Biden was able to put enough distance between himself and Trump to secure a substantial enough victory. Still it is difficult not to feel truly alarmed that some 70 million Americans, after four years of being governed by a racist gangster, voted for four more. Fascism with a new face is back in business. We need time to let that sink in.

The Americans will also have to decide what to do with Trump and the rest of his family and assorted acolytes. Already calls to paper over his crimes in the name of national harmony are being heard. Not only is this a mistake, but it is I believe a dangerous mistake.  I think it was a mistake to pardon Nixon but in that case a pardon, though unjust, given how many more minor players went to prison, was not really dangerous. Trump represents a wholly different scale of both criminality and risk.

Donald Trumps list of crimes range from campaign finance violations, obstruction of justice, - not least in instructing White House staff to ignore lawfully issued subpoenas, -  misuse of office for private gain, nepotism, grift and graft and corruption, witness tampering, tax crimes and of course wilfully misleading the American people about the nature and seriousness of COVID 19. This list encompasses such a broad spectrum that it is staggering that the Republicans blocked his impeachment. To pardon such crimes would be to give a green light to any future holder of the office to do whatever he pleased, regardless of the law. Here you can find a much more cogent case for resisting calls to pardon Trump. It is therefore essential in the fight against New Wave Fascism that Trump be held to account.

Here in the UK Johnson’s authority has all but evaporated, he is exposed for the waffling, empty vessel, the fantasist Churchill, and incompetent buffoon that he is. Though his vanity has brought the country to the brink of moral and financial bankruptcy, internationally isolated and staring into the abyss of a no deal Brexit. It is not hyperbole to describe his actions since 2016 as a crime against the country.

As the mornings are cold and dark and the evenings become dark and cold and we enter another lockdown, it is difficult, the result in the US to one side, to feel optimistic.

 I have started writing a play, with the assistance of an online Zoom course. I have also been reading a large number of books both on the US under Trump and the ongoing cyber war being waged by Putin’s Russia. I will be writing more about this, but can I recommend Sandworm By Andy Greenberg.

Stay well, stay safe, stay tuned.

 

AT 9th September 2020

 

 

 


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