The US Political System: A View from the Confused UK>

I currently reside in the UK, but lived in the US for much of my life. Many Brits I know or have overheard in pubs find the US political system extremely confusing. Trump's attack on Iran has prompted new questions about it; notably his ability to start a war without the approval of the so-called representatives of the people: Congress. OK, I know Brits find other things American confusing, like baseball and American football, just as most Americans find cricket, rugby, and FIFA football confusing. As George Bernard Shaw put it, "The English and the Americans are two great peoples separated by a common language." 

Brits are expressing their confusion about US politics more often in the Trumpian Era, because Trump is in the UK news 24/7. Many of the Brits' comments since November 2024 relate to the question, How did the US "elect" such a despicable charlatan twice? What about learning from experience? Why can't they get rid of him? An American could reply, "Hey, UK voters made another charlatan, Boris Johnson, prime minister." That's true, but there is this difference: when enough people in the UK realized what a bloviating, bullshitting, devious narcissist Johnson was, they sent him packing. His own party did, in fact, responding to angry public opinion. In fact, the Tories got rid of four PMs in 14 years. The voters turned out a fifth in 2024. That's one advantage the parliamentary system has over the presidential system. Prime ministers serve at the pleasure of the party in power. The party in power can jettison their leader at any time, if they become sufficiently toxic to the voters. Presidents serve fixed terms. It is extremely difficult if not impossible to get rid of one before the next election, no matter how incompetent or vile.

The Conservatives (Tories) allowed their members to pick Johnson's successor. The members tend to be extreme in their views, and opt for candidates with extreme views -- and limited ability. That made Liz Truss the perfect choice. She managed to nearly destroy the UK economy in just a few weeks. Tory MPs could not get her out the door fast enough. 

Back to the UK view of US politics. The most common question after the 2016 election was, Why didn't Hilary Clinton get elected? She got 3 million more votes than Trump did. In order to answer that question, I had to try to explain role of the Electoral College in presidential elections. Despite its name, it has no connection with education, much less wisdom. Have you ever tried to explain the English Wars of the Roses to glassy-eyed, hungover undergraduates? I have. I don't recommend it. 

I have explained to astonished British listeners how the Founding Fathers created the Electoral College to prevent the US from becoming a democracy. I must add many Americans are also astonished to learn that the Founders were opposed to democracy. The Founders feared that the "people" would elect some nut who would threaten "property," including human property. The EC, you see, does not represent the "people." It represents the states, each of which has a certain number of "electoral" votes, based on their population.  

Three times in US history presidential candidates who lost the popular vote have become president, because they got a majority of electoral votes. The most recent time was in 2016, when the Electoral College assured the "election" of a nut who wants to restore slavery and admires Hitler. Trump still claims he won the popular vote in 2016, just as he continues to claim he won the 2020 election, not Biden.

Yes, the Founding Fathers wanted a republic but not a democracy. And they are not the same thing. A country can be a democratic republic. It can be an undemocratic republic. It can also be a democratic monarchy, like the UK and quite a few European countries. The monarchs in these countries have no real power. They are titular heads of state. 

Of course, all this was not enough to explain what enabled Trump's rise to power, or why he remains there despite his incompetent and criminal behavior. There were many more questions to answer.

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Truth: The First Casualty of War -- and Politics

That war and truth have never coexisted happily is something a cliché nowadays. The phrase "Truth is the first casualty of war"  has been knocking about for centuries. The idea, if not the exact words, has been attributed to various figures from the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus to Hiram Johnson, a 20th century US senator. 

People continue to debate who said it first, but the oldest traceable expression of the idea came from the pen of another Johnson, the 18th century lexicographer and essayist Samuel Johnson: "Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages." [The Idler 11 November 1758]

[Image: Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds. Johnson as nearsighted]

Johnson's sentence not only contains the basic accusation -- war annihilates truth -- but an explanation: interest dictates lies and credulity encourages belief in them. "Interest" could be the interest of the country, but more likely, the interests of political leaders. "Credulity" refers to a public willingness to believe the leaders' claims without verifiable proof. 

Johnson's main target was journalists. With the emergence and expansion of newspapers and journals in the 18th century, the tribe of "scribblers" had multiplied. Their chief employment was "inventing new amusements for the rich and idle." 

The most necessary qualities of these new journalists was "contempt of shame and indifference to truth." War provided the scribblers with new opportunities to showcase their skills and make a living. Johnson's claims about journalists may seem unduly harsh, but his basic contention about war and truth has been proven correct again and again. 

But as he knew, war is not unique in abusing the truth. He also coined the phrase "politics is the last refuge of the scoundrel." Even in peacetime, politics is a kind of war: a fight for power. In the heat of political battle falsehood is a routine tactic. "Interest dictates" and "credulity encourages" lying. 

Credulity is essential to the success of political lies. To paraphrase the English poet Arthur Hugh Clough, credulity gives the lie wings to fly. Without credulity the lie would go nowhere and die. With it the lie can go "viral," especially in the world of social media.

History abounds with political liars, some successful, some not. The most glaring examples, like Hitler or Stalin, can be misleading. Their whoppers were so big we can easily overlook the more modest liars of today, in politics and other realms, like advertising.

Recent figures such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have had a long history of playing fast and loose with the truth before emerging as leaders of their countries. In spite of that, they attracted huge support from the credulous, thanks in large part to a media that either spread their lies or allowed them to fly without serious scrutiny. 

Ask yourself, how could these mega-fibbing clowns be elected leaders of two great democracies? How could a deluded lightweight with crackpot ideas manage to succeed Boris Johnson as Tory leader and Prime Minister? I mean, Liz Truss?

We can't blame the meteoric rise of Truss on British voters. They had no say in the matter. A majority of Tory Party members, less than 100,000 people "elected" her as the leader of a nation of nearly 70 million. That almost makes the US Electoral College look like a democratic way of electing a president. 

It is true that her own Tory MP's pushed Truss out of the job in a few weeks, making her the shortest serving prime minister in British history. But she had enough time to do huge damage the British economy and help her old employers, Shell Oil, make record windfall profits. [Image: Liz Truss announcing her resignation]

Truss, like Boris, is a shameless opportunist who says whatever she thinks will achieve power. If her intelligence matched her lust for power, she would be a formidable force. If.

Why did so much of the media treat these amoral and incompetent characters as if they were credible leaders? What interests were directing their rise to power? Why were so many people credulous in the face of their lies, bogus promises, and fantasies? 

More importantly, perhaps, is there any prospect of change? Or are we condemned to an endless parade of charlatans and fools ascending what Benjamin Disraeli called the "greasy pole" of power?

A brief glance at what claims to be accurate media does not arouse a sense of optimism. Many media figures today are little different from the sort of scribblers Samuel Johnson denounced. Actually, they may be far worse and far more dangerous, as are the "interests" behind them. 

Consider Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and the general run of FOX "news" reporters. Multiply them by hundreds of others like them on TV, radio, and social media. Consider the scribblers write for tabloid newspapers such as The Sun, The Daily Mail, and The Daily Express. Have a nice day. 

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Patriotism and Scoundrels: The Context of Donald Trump

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Samuel Johnson. 

Dr Johnson, as he is generally known was one of the great literary critics and essayists of the 18th century. He is best known for his highly successful Dictionary of the English Language (1755). He was also the subject of the first modern biography, James Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791). Johnson was in many respects a conservative, but he was also a harsh critic of slavery.

According to his friend and biographer, James Boswell, Johnson made the remark about patriotism being the last refuge of a scoundrel during a conversation with friends at a meeting in Soho. He was not condemning patriotism as such. In his dictionary, he had defined patriotism in a positive sense. He was attacking those who sought to exploit patriotic feelings for personal or political advantage. His quotation has lasted because it anticipated and exemplifies a major problem of our age of mass voting and mass communications. As democracy has advanced, so has the number of scoundrels trying to leverage patriotic and nationalist sentiments to gain power. They are usually referred to as populists due to their attempts to harness and exploit the angers of the masses. 

The arrival of cheap daily newspapers and other inexpensive publications in the late 19th century provided a platform for demagogues appealing to the new voting public. The simultaneous spread of pseudo-scientific nationalist and racialist views provided them with a popular agenda. By the 1920s, radio and film became additional platforms for rousing patriotic outrage against the "enemies" of the nation, which fascists and others on the extreme  right increasingly defined in narrow ethnic and racialist terms. From the 1950s, these patriotic scoundrels were able to use television to spread their malign messages. In our time, social media has opened up another major outlet for populists. 

Obvious examples of patriotic scoundrels from the 20th century include Hitler and Mussolini. The USA has produced scores of them, notably Father Coughlin, Senator Joe McCarthy, and more recently, Donald Trump. They have all to varying degrees exploited the same cliché-ridden formula. They promise to "make our nation great again" and "protect it against its enemies within and without."  

These well-known demagogues are just the tip of the patriotic scoundrel iceberg. It includes a huge cast of less well-known historical and contemporary figures. The lesser known purveyors of patriotic bile enable the more visible ones by spreading and often creating their message. Focusing so much of our attention on a phenomenon like Hitler lulls too many of us into thinking that only leaders wearing swastikas and heiling are dangerous. 

The rabidly anti-Semitic Karl Lueger, pictured below was the mayor of Vienna in the early years of the 20th century. He looks innocent enough but he and other racists inspired Adolf Hitler. Trump's acolytes have included Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and many others.

It is depressing to reflect that 250 years after Samuel Johnson's famous quip, charlatans and demagogues continue to deceive the public almost effortlessly with "patriotic" rhetoric. 

Perhaps, as some say, education is the answer. It wouldn't hurt. But humans can be exceedingly slow learners. Perhaps the fault lies not in the scoundrels but in people so easily and willingly deceived by the nonsense they spout. That is depressing.    

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POLIMERICKS from Brexitstan: Updated

My guardian angel sent me these political limericks (polimericks) to keep me sane while enduring the Tory Brexdemic. The angel instructed me to share them with the world. Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the shameless liars who kicked your rear. 

There once was a PM lackaday!
Who said, Parliament's in my way.
He hatched a cunning plan
And didn't give a damn
The law must simply give way.

There once was a Theresa named May
Who said, Brexit's the work of a day.
The EU will give up
As soon as I gear up.
Now she's feeling a sense of Dis-May.

There once was a Scotsman name Haggis
Who said Brexit is going to shag us.
I voted Remainer,
Now I'm a Complainer.
Out of Europe England has drug us.

There once was a Boris named Johnson
Who said, Brexit has been by me be won. 
I'm your greatest PM,
A wonderful gem
Such a damn brilliant son of a gun.

There was a young man from the City
Who said, life was formerly pretty.
I once was a banker
I'm now just a wanker.
Brexit has made everything shitty. 

Three Cheers for Boris and the Tories: Lies! Corruption! Sewage! 

Polimericks, c. 2019-22