Well, the Tory leaders of the Leave campaign were former London mayor Boris Johnson (a man so posh that his full name, we shit you not, is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson)
.. To recap: One old university friend pushed the country to a constitutional and economic crisis to gain power from another old university friend, but got stabbed in the back by a third old university friend, at which point he decided not to bother after all.
.. This is all made more fun by the possibility that whoever does become the next prime minister might call an election immediately, which would in effect be a referendum on the aftermath of the referendum... Yes, he is absolutely 100% a British version of Bernie Sanders, except with a beard and a fondness for root vegetables. Oh, and he actually won... Also, they basically hate him, and lots of them think that he secretly wanted Leave to win even though the Labour party officially supported Remain... The idea was that this would force Corbyn to step down himself. Except he didn’t. He just kept appointing his increasingly small band of loyalists to the shadow cabinet and insisting he was going to tough it out... So now Labour MPs are in open warfare with their leader and are probably going to force another leadership election, while Corbyn does his best to carry on like nothing’s happening... And since Labour party members voted heavily for Corbyn last time, he could well win again. Either way, it all might end up splitting the century-old party in two... In conclusion: The UK voted to leave the EU. The economy kind of melted. Nobody has a plan for what to do and everybody wants someone else to take responsibility – but the governing party is too busy stabbing each other in the back, while the opposition party is too busy being at war with itself. The UK might split up entirely. And we might have to vote on all this again in a few months’ time.
The Theology of Donald Trump
James Dobson, who is among the most influential leaders in the evangelical world and serves on Mr. Trump’s evangelical executive advisory board, declared that “Trump appears to be tender to things of the Spirit,” by which Dr. Dobson meant the Holy Spirit.
Of all the descriptions of Mr. Trump we’ve heard this election season, this may be the most farcical. As described by St. Paul, the “fruit of the Spirit” includes forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, hardly qualities one associates with Mr. Trump. It shows you the lengths Mr. Trump’s supporters will go to in order to rationalize their enthusiastic support of him.
.. Time and again Mr. Trump has shown contempt for those he perceives as weak and vulnerable — “losers,” in his vernacular. They include P.O.W.s, people with disabilities, those he deems physically unattractive and those he considers politically powerless. He bullies and threatens people he believes are obstacles to his ambitions.
.. What Mr. Trump admires is strength. For him, a person’s intrinsic worth is tied to worldly success and above all to power. He never seems free of his obsession with it. In his comments to that gathering of evangelicals, Mr. Trump said this: “And I say to you folks, because you have such power, such influence. Unfortunately the government has weeded it away from you pretty strongly. But you’re going to get it back. Remember this: If you ever add up, the men and women here are the most important, powerful lobbyists. You’re more powerful. Because you have men and women, you probably have something like 75, 80 percent of the country believing. But you don’t use your power. You don’t use your power.”
In eight sentences Mr. Trump mentioned some variation of power six times, to a group of individuals who have professed their love and loyalty to Jesus, who in his most famous sermon declared, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and “Blessed are the meek,” who said, “My strength is made perfect in weakness,” and who was humiliated and crucified by the powerful.
To better understand Mr. Trump’s approach to life, ethics and politics, we should not look to Christ but to Friedrich Nietzsche, who was repulsed by Christianity and Christ. “What is good?” Nietzsche asks in “The Anti-Christ”: “Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man. What is evil? Whatever springs from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power increases – that resistance is overcome.”
.. Trump embodies a Nietzschean morality rather than a Christian one.
.. Mr. Trump’s entire approach to politics rests on dehumanization. If you disagree with him or oppose him, you are not merely wrong. You are worthless, stripped of dignity, the object of derision. This attitude is central to who Mr. Trump is and explains why it pervades and guides his campaign. If he is elected president, that might-makes-right perspective would infect his entire administration.
.. Evangelical Christians who are enthusiastically supporting Donald Trump are signaling, even if unintentionally, that this calling has no place in politics and that Christians bring nothing distinctive to it — that their past moral proclamations were all for show and that power is the name of the game.
.. Jacques Ellul wrote: “Politics is the church’s worst problem. It is her constant temptation, the occasion of her greatest disasters, the trap continually set for her by the prince of this world.” In rallying round Mr. Trump, evangelicals have walked into the trap. The rest of the world sees it. Why don’t they?
Why Is Populism Winning on the American Right?
The answer may have less to to with the Trump phenomenon, and more daunting implications, than it seems.
.. “There are are a couple of black-swan events that happened here,” Brooks said.
.. “One was that media are going bust, and they saw Donald Trump as bank. CNN gave Donald Trump an 80 percent market share of earned media. Eighty percent. They basically treated him like Anthony Bourdain, … as a reality-show star on CNN. Responsible fourth estate? It’s about money; it’s about not going out of business for another year. That’s what it comes down to,” he says. “The second was a field of 17 candidates on the Republican side.”
Without these black swans, Brooks suggests, Trump’s candidacy would be as implausible now as conventional wisdom saw it to be a year ago.
.. “What we are seeing is anger at a disruption of our economy and, really, our social order—of the magnitude we saw when the agricultural age gave way to the industrial age,” Slaughter says:
.. “The problem is when anger is the salient characteristic of a political system. And that has a name: It’s populism. And populism is driven by grievance; and grievance is the rocket fuel of an anger that becomes truly salient, that becomes truly central to the political system.”
.. “On average, far-right parties increase their vote share by 30% after a financial crisis.”
.. But if the restoration of such a moral consensus is the work of aspirational leadership, why couldn’t Barack Obama pull that off? Many Americans see him as the apotheosis of an aspirational leader.
.. “My father hated bumper stickers. He said that they’re undemocratic. In fact, once he even said, they’re ‘fascistic.’ Now, that’s not my view, but … what bothered him was that a bumper sticker is a slogan. It’s a way of reducing a complex issue to an applause line. And that, he thought, was poisonous in our politics.”
.. Donald Trump may be defeated in November, but the anger and resentment behind him won’t be.
British Political Turmoil Makes America’s Look Like Amateur Hour
Boris Johnson stabbed David Cameron in the back. Michael Gove stabbed David Cameron in the back. Michael Gove stabbed Boris Johnson in the back. It’s very simple.
If he is a buffoon, furthermore, he’s one that can sing “Ode to Joy” in German and read Voltaire in French—which are not skills generally associated with a certain American politician who has also attracted the label.