It's frustrating that few politicians can write or say to Trump what Bertrand Russell in his 90s expressed with such elegant concision to Oswald Mosley*.
Obama's loyalty to the dignity appropriate to his high office is understandable. But it's painful to watch. I look forward, in one way only, to the moment when he relinquishes it, when he can - as he has already intimated - say all the things that have been denied him as President. Clearly his successor has no such qualms about dignity and is still churning out his semi-literate Twitter attacks. Well, maybe he will learn the hard way.
Can other politicans stop saying 'let's wait and see' and call Trump out for what he represents? This Irish senator, Labor MP Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, clearly can, but he's in a minority.
I share my dear American friend Sue Scheid's focused anger against everyone who voted for any candidate other than Hillary Clinton. All were deluded, and all are responsible for threatening to send the world to hell in a handcart, or a dumptruck, choose your vehicle. Those who did so and are protesting can do what they want but in my opinion they forfeited that right.
Fortunately it also seems, to judge from two strong features in today's Guardian, that the tide is turning against the insidious liberal notion that both this and Brexit were the result of the dispossessed kicking against the elite. And can the press stop using the word 'alt-right' and call it by its proper name, fascism?
We will watch him every millimetre of the way and fight back, or at least from the UK try to help enable others to do so.
Update (21/11): so far the President-elect's actions, apart from the horrendous people he's been appointing as his inner circle, have been to lash out on Twitter against a TV chat show and a Broadway musical. And this is the man who promised to fight IS?
*Transcript in case it's too small to read:
22 January 1962
Sir Oswald Mosley,
5, Lowndes Court,
Lowndes Square,
London, S.W.1.
Dear Sir Oswald,
Thank you for your letter and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism.
I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.
I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement.
Yours sincerely,Bertrand Russell
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