Donald Trump picked up his phone, flexed his trigger finger, and in response to a highly sensitive situation that will affect thousands of people’s lives, addressed the nation of Iran thus: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.”
And it’s not as if the President has the excuse of having had one late-night whisky too many. He is a non-drinker, and it was posted at 8am – on Easter Sunday no less.
He ended his Truth Social rant with a sardonic, deeply offensive jibe to the rulers, and indeed the people, of Iran. “Praise be to Allah,” he wrote, a sacrilegious taunt that even Trump’s natural constituency disavowed.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former congresswoman who was once one of his most devoted supporters, was upset by his use of such rhetoric on the holiest day in the Christian calendar. “Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness,” she said. “His words and actions should not be supported by Christians.” Or we might add by anyone of any faith and of none.
He is a product of a divisive, confrontational world where public discourse has been degraded and where social media has permitted, even encouraged, the crudest form of dialogue.
For the past few weeks, I have been observing a parallel world. It is one in which politics is a force for good, and its hallmarks are decency, propriety, intelligence and public service. It makes our world – in which the language of politics is that of the barroom, diplomacy is conducted as if in a playground, and people’s lives, livelihoods and beliefs are treated with disdain and disrespect – seem hard to believe.
You don’t have to re-watch The West Wing, the peerless television drama from 25 years ago that chronicled two terms of a fictional Democratic presidency, to believe that there is a better way for politics to be conducted. The power of Aaron Sorkin’s writing and characterisation was that it captured the daily struggle of well-intentioned people to retain the principles of fair governance in a world full of compromise and dark threat, and in that, it brilliantly prefigured a time when the White House was not the repository of high values but of base impulses.
The world, as imagined by Sorkin, is a complicated place. Even a quarter of a century ago, the dangers of Iran’s nuclear capability, of the threat of Hamas to peace in the Middle East, and the burgeoning power of China presented multi-layered diplomatic, economic and military challenges to America. Today, however, global affairs have somehow got simpler, more black and white, more us and them, and Trump can stand on Capitol Hill and effectively yell at his enemies.
Yet he is also a character created by us. He is a product of a divisive, confrontational world where public discourse has been degraded and where social media has permitted, even encouraged, the crudest form of dialogue.
I know I am indulging in a flight of fancy by watching The West Wing again, seeking solace in a make-believe liberal world that is dressed up as an actuality-based drama. But that is to miss the point. By losing oneself in a version of American politics that is driven by a moral imperative, it helps us – if help were needed – to understand how low we have sunk, of how integrity has become an outdated quality and how.
The West Wing‘s President Bartlet was lucky. He had Aaron Sorkin to write his words. And what about this speech from the White House, which is even more apposite today than it was 25 years ago. “More than any time in recent history, America’s destiny is not of our own choosing. We did not seek, nor did we provoke an assault on our freedoms and our way of life. We did not expect nor did we invite a confrontation with evil. Yet the true measure of a people’s strength is how they rise to master that moment when it does arrive.”
Oh, how we miss President Bartlet.
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