HOW TRUMP TOOK THE US BEYOND SATIRE
The title of P J O’Rourke’s book – How The Hell Did This Happen? – is intended to express the satirist’s bewilderment at the ‘ridiculous’ election of President Donald Trump. But that title could also raise another question about the 2016 US election. How the hell did it happen that P J O’Rourke, self-styled ‘Republican Party reptile’ and famously right-wing libertarian drug-taking ‘gonzo’ journalist, ended up endorsing Hillary Clinton, the buttoned-up presidential candidate of the Democratic Party establishment, whom he calls ‘the crone in crony capitalism’?
O’Rourke’s answer is that all of the other ‘zombie presidential candidates’ were even worse. So if you want to know how ‘the loonies’ of the Republican Party ended up with ‘such a repellent nominee’ as Trump, look at the other contenders ‘and be repelled’.
Seemingly despairing of the system, O’Rourke applies his wit to suggesting alternative ways that might historically have selected better presidents, from applying the ‘Which candidate would I go on a road trip with?’ test to giving power to the First Ladies instead (Melania Trump would be ruled out as a naturalised American).
In the end, however, he backs Mrs Clinton against Trump as ‘the second-worst thing that could happen to America’: ‘Better the devil you know than the devil who knows nothing… Better a mangy cat than a rabid dog… Better to lay a sewer pipe that is Clinton than to lie in that sewer looking up to a reality TV star.’ You get the idea.
But the real target of O’Rourke’s bile is the American electorate. ‘The American government is of the people, by the people, for the people,’ he says. ‘And these days America is peopled by 320million Donald Trumps obsessed with ‘greed for money’.
In his last chapter, The Revolt Against The Elites, O’Rourke describes the election as a ‘Loser Mutiny’ by ‘the frightened’ against the elites they fear, linking it to Brexit and the rise of ‘populism’ elsewhere. He concludes that American voters are scared children who have turned for help to Trump as ‘the big stupid bully at the back of the classroom’.
This patronising line gets things almost exactly
‘He concludes that American voters are scared children who’ve turned for help to the bully at the back of the room’
the wrong way around. What the US election, Brexit vote and the reaction to these events demonstrated most is the fear and loathing the political and cultural elites feel towards those whom Clinton branded‘ depl or ab les ’. Their sneering about ‘low-information’ – code for ‘low intelligence’–American voters consolidated the rebellion that led almost 63 million to vote for the dreadful Trump.
And, of course, O’Rourke shares that elite prejudice. He concludes that: ‘Since the beginning of democracy in 5th-Century BC Athens, the greatest danger to democratic institutions has been thedemos, the people themselves’, whom he calls ‘a mob’. Democracy was indeed under threat from its inception – from the elite of powerful oligarchs and philosophers who made demokratia a dirty word meaning mob rule, and sought to separate its two constituent parts –
demos, the people, from kratos, power and control. The modern elites are now trying to do so again.
O’Rourke has the insight to know that the election was not so much won by Trump as lost by ‘the smug look worn by Clinton and everyone in the Clinton camp’. And, as he adds, ‘EVERYONE was in the Clinton camp – every sanctimonious celebrity, preachy egg-head, public Goody Two-Shoes’ etc. Somehow he forgets to add ‘and smug rightwing gonzo pundit’. Thus the Republican Party reptile ends up sounding more like a tame Washington lounge lizard. If he’s looking for an ironic line on the US election, how about ‘Satirists back Establishment’? Mick Hume is the author of ‘Revolting! How The Establishment Are Undermining Democracy And What They’re Afraid Of’.