I just have to ask, why you two GB and DA, have such a passion for American politics ?
Seriously? America is the most powerful country on this planet, the Pres the most powerful single individual. What's the saying?; 'When America sneezes, the world catches a cold and the UK gets put on life-support' or summat.
But the real reason I ask folk on here how they'd vote if they were
not Brits living in Britland is to test their ideology; is the Brexit issue for Brexit-voters peculiar to this country and its hangup with the EU or is it an indication of something more innate - a jingoism, a xenophobia, a hankering to a 'great' past where that country strode the world and put folk in their place - and should do so again.
There is no question to me that for the u-s and many Leavers it's the latter, hence they'd vote 'populist-swaggering-bullish-BS-ego-massaging' in whichever country they lived.
This
psbbsem has always lain just below the surface, but as long as the economy rambled on at a fairly steady lick folk didn't have too much to complain about; they could generally see that things were getting better and that they were better off than their parents. A period of (possibly unnecessary?) austerity put paid to that - as it has always done in history. History is quite important in this regard.
This grumbling resentment that couldn't usually be aired because it would be seen as being unreasonable, unjustified, bigoted and frankly ridiculous is now given vent, and this is almost always triggered by a toxic spokesman (almost always a man, of course). As always in history - because mankind is but an animal and works on instinct which we have learned to rationalise & reason with for the greater benefit - that reasoning is for many just a veneer. All it takes to crack that veneer is a couple of things; the first, as I said, is the figurehead - a person who
claims he represents you - and the other is the luck of the draw, that you are born in a place that allows this outlet; it gives you a feeling of superiority just to belong to this group, and this group is naturally superior and is therefore owed more. The cororally is that there must surely be someone else trying to have what's rightfully yours...
Hence I ask about Trump - probably the most extreme example of his type. So over-blown and so devoid of values and dignity that he is
bound to ultimately fail because of the lack of reasoning, thought, honesty and empathy behind his persona.
Heat - to his
bear credit - has hinted that he would vote for Trump, but only after he ridiculously tried to justify this by bring the alternative candidate down to Trump's level.
JJ simply refuses to answer this hypothetical. That's good - it shows us a lot more than a simple "Yes, I would!" would have done.
I've already mentioned Le Pen. I could add Tommy Robinson, Farage, Banks, Bannon - any bigoted right-wing extremist - all of them defended by the u-s on here. I could cite the sources they will use and also defend - Breitbart, InfoWars, any number of Mogg facebook pages...
What drives the u-s like this is also happening across Europe and beyond, wherever there is a new populist, right-wing government. All the characteristics of these groups are to be found; isolationism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, a suppression of the free press. Turkey's democratic rise is now in shreds. Erdoğan harks back incessantly to the Ottoman Empire, promotes anti-Semitism, suppresses the free press, jails reporters and academics, attacks the judiciary, removes Darwin from school text books.
Trump harangues everything that is against him - much like his Turkish counterpart - with a tirade of
blatant lies. We are nowhere near this in the UK, of course, but they
are bedfellows and we
have seen the headlines in the Mail - 'betrayal', 'enemies of the people', 'traitors'.
The ideology is the same - which is why I take the u-s on here to task.