LIVING WITH DENIAL

Lenny Bruce did a bit in one of his routines about cheating on your partner. “Deny it, don’t admit anything, even if they’ve got pictures, deny it ‘I was just lying down next to her to see which one of us was taller’. Deny it”. Advice Donald Trump seems to have adopted whole sale. In the face of the now published birthday card to Epstein, bearing his signature, he puts out a photo of his signature next to the signature on the card, claiming it is proof he didn’t sign the card, even though it is the same signature. He expects people to believe his denials despite the evidence of their own eyes. There must be another level of brazen we have never seen before, but Donald Trump has scaled the heights. 

The great tragedy is that his acolytes still rally  behind him, repeating and amplifying the lies, in the expectation that it will work and keep what is left of his base on side. And it seems to be working. What on earth is wrong with the congressional republican party members that they continue to prop up this man? The duplicity, chicanery and stupidity, coupled with the narcissistic persona is there for the world to see, and yet western world leaders seem to mollycoddle him because of the office he holds. Is it not time to put a stop to that and call him out? Why is he not putting the weight of his office into cutting off Putin’s regime through more severe sanctions? Why is he not putting more pressure on Netanyahu by withholding supplies of weapons and support in general?

From what I can gather from the reports I see and hear from many citizens in the United States he is reviled. They see him as a would be dictator and are taking to the streets and town halls in protest at his ‘regime’. What is sad is that the rigidity of the written constitution does not seem to allow for his immediate removal, save by way of an impeachment for so called high crimes and misdemeanours  which requires a vote by two thirds of the Senate. We have already seen how that works. It doesn’t, due to the numbers of his republican supporters. It would require a defection of at least 22 Republican senators out of the 53 currently in office. Before that can even happen, the House Of Representatives has to pass a bill of impeachment, which is even more unlikely to happen given that the Republican Party holds 220 seats in the House to the Democrats 213. 

It is clear that the founding fathers never anticipated a person in the shape of a Donald Trump would ever become President of the United States of America, primarily because they never anticipated that the American people would ever conceive of voting for such a person, nor did they ever conceive that the congress would so easily acquiesce to a would be dictator. At the time there was no reason for them to anticipate such an outcome. It will require some changes in legislation to deal with this development, and that does not look like happening any time soon. So the world is locked into Trump for the time being.

Yet again, history shows that societies have allowed atrocities to occur because they believe ‘it can’t happen here’. It clearly can happen and appears to be happening all over the world. Are we too bound up in our own daily travails to notice what is going on around us? How is it that our countries’ economies have allowed for the proliferation of shoplifting and thefts on such a scale as we now have? Why do we have so many world wide scams in operation on such a scale as to be able to blackmail major institutions and corporations? What has happened to us to allow isolationist populist bigoted nationalism to take hold, and elect such people as representatives of our lives? What has happened to concepts of integrity and duty of care? How is it that we allow some people to deny responsibility  even after what we see and hear with our own eyes and ears? What good is mass media if it all amounts to nothing? We are surrounded daily with pictures and sounds of atrocities and some even take to the streets in protest, only to become part of the story, rather than lead to a solution. 

I am full of questions and denials myself, so what is it that will make a difference? Is it another amendment to the constitution of the United States? Is it proportional representation in the United Kingdom? Is it more severe law enforcement? Is it more social constructionism? Or is it just down to “Deny it. Even if they’ve got pictures”?