2024: Year of Ironies

Let's face it, 2024 has been a pretty miserable year so far, and the worst may be to come. War, famine, massacres, mass murders, school shootings, hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, floods, fires, increasing inequality, and mounting assaults on human rights have been just a few of the horrible events of this year. It is of course, a leap year, and humanity seems eager to leap -- into the abyss. 

Irony is an enduring feature of the human condition, but 2024 fairly drips with it. Politicians denounce war crimes and crimes against humanity, yet continue to allow arms sales to the perpetrators. (I won't name any names, but I think you can guess who I mean). Politicians vow to combat climate change, poverty, disease, and other ills, but do virtually nothing. The world should be getting better, given our vast experience and knowledge, but it is getting worse. Another irony.  

Irony extends even to the dates of key elections, though this may be evident only to those who take an interest in history. This summer in the UK, the Tory (Conservative) Party Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, called a General Election. He had to call one in 2024, the law demanded it. But he could choose the date. So what date did he choose? Well, July 4 of course, US Independence Day -- the day independence was declared from Britain. On July 4, 2024, UK voters declared independence from the Tories, who suffered a landslide defeat after 14 disastrous years in power. 

The date of the US election is similarly ironic. November 5th is the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot in Britain. In 1603, a group of Catholic opponents of the Protestant regime of James I (and VI) concocted a plan to blow up Parliament and the king at its opening. The plot was discovered just in time, and the plotters captured and executed or killed in a firefight. The date, November 5th, became known as Guy Fawkes Day, for the plotter who planted the gunpowder under Parliament.    

In the USA, no person or party can choose the date of the presidential election. The Constitution fixes it as the first Tuesday in November, in a leap year, which this year happens (karma?) to fall on the 5th. A presidential election in the USA is always a leap into The Twilight Zone. But this election season seems destined to outdo all the previous ones in its fantastically outrageous mockery of the democratic process, not to mention its sheer lunacy. 

If this were the script for a dramatic film or TV series, producers would reject it out of hand as impossible. No one would believe it for a moment. Its only hope would be to rewritten as a comedic farce loaded with slapstick and infantile dialogue, a kind of political Beverly Hillbillies. How TV news presenters can report on this election and keep a straight face is beyond me. They must have been well trained. It's a good year to be on radio.  

When was the last time a convicted felon with scores of outstanding indictments against him ran for president? This snake oil salesman, father of 10,000 lies, has been selling bibles! to the faithful to raise money for his campaign. The scenario drips with unintended irony. He doesn't read and certainly doesn't heed the GOOD BOOK. He's broken virtually every commandment on a daily basis. "His" bibles are produced in China, a country he has repeatedly threatened and condemned. But they are cheap and profits are good. Never mind that a bible is the one book you can get for free in the USA.

Nevertheless, Don Old's supporters swear that GOD sent Donald J. Trump to save America from satanic libruls and commonists who run pedophile rings out of pizza parlor basements in DC and use an infernal machine to hurl hurricanes into red states. In their eyes, the "J" in Trump's name stands for Jesus, or possibly Jenius. Somehow, he didn't manage to come up with a way to save almost a million Americans from the pandemic. Bleach didn't work.

To his MAGAts Don Old is both savior and savvy, and most important, is opposed to gun control, the litmus test of their political leaning. He agrees with them that guns are not the problem, people are. The solution therefore appears to be eliminating people, because guns without people will not be a problem. Irony leaps at us again here, given his allegedly close encounter with a high-powered bullet at a rally in July. 

Another irony arises from the fact that Trump, the convicted criminal, is running against Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor. Who will prevail in the election on November 5th, the felon or the prosecutor? The global reputation of the USA hangs in the balance, by a thread. If Trump wins, it will likely be as in 2016, not because he wins the popular vote, but because he wins the Electoral College, a racist and undemocratic relic of the Constitution of 1787. That would be ironic, if not fitting. 

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