The current political landscape is not one that can be appreciated in the same fashion as a pictorial landscape. It has nothing like the vision of a Van Gogh, Constable or Turner. The present American landscape is particularly at odds with the beauty to be found in its actual landscapes. I am thinking of the paintings from the Hudson River School. The work of its founder Thomas Cole and later members Frederick Church, John Frederick Kensett and Albert Bierstadt are rather fine examples of mid nineteenth century landscape paintings.
There is something about Bierstadt’s work that favours Turner.
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| Rocky Mountain Landscape, 1870 |
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| Lake Tahoe, 1868 |
He was also a war artist, the Tim Page of his day.
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| Guerilla Warfare, Civil War, 1862 |
So where can one go from here?
The seemingly endless exposition of Trump’s background and narcissistic
behaviour has no effect whatever on his Maga supporters. They have no truck
with the written, photographic, filmed and other recorded evidence that shows
him up to be a complete sham. He is the personification of the snake oil
salesman that has been tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail
since the pioneering days of the American landscape. Numerous writers and
historians have depicted his kind for centuries and still they emerge to
bamboozle the surprisingly vast numbers of ignorant and gullible citizens, who
for some obscure reason are drawn to them. They think of Trump as ‘one of us’
despite every indication to the contrary. He speaks in their vernacular all the
while proclaiming to be so rich that he is immune from corruption, as well as
mendaciously claiming to be a self-made man. As to being self-made, one has to
accept that he has constructed this dangerous duplicitous figure, himself, all
on his own. He is indeed a self-made charlatan of the first order, despite all
his advantages at birth. He has bribed, bullied and cheated himself into the
spotlight and into the American landscape.
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