Tag: Donald Trump

Charlie Kirk elevated to sainthood in new state religion

Donald Trump and JD Vance yesterday elevated the hard right of America to a form of state religion by canonising Charlie Kirk at a memorial service that will galvanise the president’s followers but create a sense of dread among those committed to democratic freedom.  

Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10, and irrespective of his hard right views and often inflammatory comments, he most certainly did not deserve to die. His killer must face justice (but not the death penalty that more civilised nations have abolished).

However, if his murder was reprehensible so, too, is the way in which Donald Trump and his supporters have used the killing to create a propaganda-fuelled campaign against free speech and political opposition by lionising a flawed character, punishing those who would dare to tarnish his newly burnished reputation, and turning his memorial service into a political rally.

The acts are from an old playbook. Watching the memorial service – attended by what has been variously described as 70,000 or 200,000 people – was not so much witnessing history in the making as sitting through a rerun. Continue reading “Charlie Kirk elevated to sainthood in new state religion” →

Today’s forecast: More fog of war approaching

Here is the weather forecast: A large front is developing, preceded by fog.

The fog is expected to be widespread and persistent.

Older viewers may recall a similar severe weather system that developed in 2003, when visibility was impaired for many weeks.

It was the fog of war. It lingered over the Gulf states, was the trigger point for the Iraq War, and led to hundreds of thousands of casualties.

Viewers will also recall that in the midst of that fog were Weapons of Mass Destruction or WMDs. Forecasters at the time predicted massive damage if they were activated.

The forecasters then were wrong. The WMDs did not exist. The meteorologists had placed far too much reliance on data provided by a single source. It was called Curveball and analysts had taken its information at face value. In May 2004 the New York Times published a fulsome mea culpa, admitting it had taken official and other sources at face value and had failed to check their veracity. Three months later the Washington Post apologised to readers for being “overly credulous” and published a 3000-word article exposing its lapses in reporting and editing.

One might have thought that experience would have made all of us wary of information from sources fixated on particularly nasty weather. It has certainly been burned into the consciousness of journalists, who have been less trusting (at least of the White House and the Pentagon) ever since.

But too many people still put their faith in the hands of foggy forecasters. Continue reading “Today’s forecast: More fog of war approaching” →

Public media at the mercy of grubby political paws

If John Reith had not been cremated and his ashes scattered in the ruins of a Scottish church, the father of public service broadcasting would be spinning in his grave.

The BBC’s first director-general saw it as a way to support an inclusive, participatory and enlightened democracy. He has since been dismissed by some as a moralistic, authoritarian Scottish Presbyterian but his principles defined public service media and remain at their core today.

Lord Reith’s broadcasting vision was to bring together different classes and regional populations. Its role was to reinforce social integration. That ideal was – and still is – the antithesis of partisanship and socio-economic superiority.

If he were alive today, he would not simply be annoyed. He was annoyed when he saw a BBC announcer kissing a secretary. He would be more than angry. Anger was something he felt when he spoiled a new battle tunic by getting himself shot by a sniper in the First World War. He would be incensed. He would be enraged at the way those who hold the purse strings have politicised the process of public media funding.

A concept that seeks to serve the interests and needs of a nation as a whole finds itself, in the 21st century, at the mercy of political idealogues and elected manipulators. The right-wing members of these groups accuse public media of being left-wing – in spite of little evidence to support the claim. Indeed, organisations that measure bias tend to put public media in the centre zone.

‘Left-wing bias’ is more likely to be code for confirmation bias that requires media to reflect a person’s (or a party’s) view of the world. No doubt it will be applied by some in the reading of this column.

An excellent example of confirmation bias can be found in the title given to a US House of Representatives sub-committee hearing on the Trump Administration’s proposed cuts to public media: “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable”. Continue reading “Public media at the mercy of grubby political paws” →

Biden cannot rise from the ashes after debate’s funeral rite

I am wracked with guilt over the way I sat transfixed and watched someone die on live television. Ghoulish? Macabre? Insensitive? Yes, I was guilty of all of those things.

In my defence – and I admit it is a weak excuse – it did look as though the person had already died some time ago.

But before you take to social media to flay me alive, I do ask you to consider your own reaction to the end-of-life display by President Joe Biden in his debate with Donald Trump.

And, of course, I am talking figuratively. Biden took to the hustings after the debate in a desperate attempt to prove he was very much alive and planned to remain so after being re-elected. I’m not sure he succeeded.

There is no getting away from the fact that he died a death in front of the cameras in CNN’s Atlanta studios. Even the most ardent Biden supporters had their fingers crossed behind their backs when they said Trump’s falsehoods were more damaging than their own leader’s fumbling missteps.

Media commentators were excoriating in their descriptions of Biden’s performance, and none more so than the Daily Mail’s Richard Littlejohn who drew on an imaginative array of metaphors to describe not only Biden’s performance but also the spectacle of two bizarre opponents slugging it out. Here are a few examples:

Last night’s US Presidential debate in Atlanta, Georgia, made a bar-room brawl in the Bronx between two incontinent old age pensioners look decorous…Biden and Trump reminded me of Statler and Waldorf, the quarrelsome geriatrics from the front row of the balcony on The Muppets…If the President had been a racehorse at Ascot last week, the steward would have put him out of his misery with a single shot to the temple…The post-match quarterbacks on Republican-friendly Fox News were enthusiastically describing last night as a victory for Trump. Which, because of Biden’s cringe-making meltdown, it probably was. But honestly? Trump was kicking a cripple. It was excruciating to watch. Continue reading “Biden cannot rise from the ashes after debate’s funeral rite” →