Trump the scapegoat

By Pete North - January 14, 2021

There’s a lot of talking in US media about uniting and rebuilding democracy after Trump. In this Trump is a very convenient scapegoat. There is certainly plenty he can take the blame for – and his predicament is largely one of his own making, but there’s a serious lack of self-awareness in US media.

The clue is Biden’s inauguration shindig, whereupon Hollywood A-lister, Tom Hanks, will host a love-in featuring Justin Timberlake and other pop stars I’m told are famous. Nothing says the out of touch elites are back in control quite like a Hollywood love letter to the Democrat party.

In their minds everything was fine until Trump came along and spoiled it for them, failing to note that Trump is a symptom, not a cause. Moreover, in the incitement stakes, Democrats have done more than their fair share of it. Casting aspersions on the legitimacy of the process is a game both sides have played to their advantage – and the Democrats leveraged the violence last summer for political gain. The message was clear. There would be no peace until Trump was gone. The left indulged on a four year long tantrum.

They pull the same trick every single time a Republican is elected only this time a lot of it stuck precisely because Trump is paranoid incompetent fantasist and talking up the threat he posed was easy to do. By exaggerating the danger they green-lit violent protests while the activist media made excuses for it. A lot of what we saw last week was a consequence of normalising that violence.

I expect we’ll now see a repeat cycle that will see Trumpians re-organising and the next time they win, we’ll see the same sustained campaing of histrionics followed by a plague of rioting and protest. Thus America has become a Democrat protection racket. You are free to vote for whomever you like, but if it’s Republican they’ll take to the streets and burn the cities. That in turn will sustain the far right who will pick virtually any excuse to reciprocate. The Republican party then has to carry the can for it while the Dems take no responsibility whatsoever.

For as long as this state of electoral blackmail exists there will always be a massive contingent of voters willing to vote for literally anyone if they can beat the Dems. This is where we were in 2016 where few enthusiastically embraced Trump, but simply preferred him to Clinton who represents the complacency, arrogance and corruption of the Washington establishment.

In order to break out of this carousel somebody needs to show leadership and attempt to build bridges. But while both sides continue to deny that there are any consequences to their actions, the situation will continue to deteriorate. The Biden administration will mouth the usual emollient platitudes over the course of the inauguration but will then set about a sustained campaign of gaslighting and gloating, using what happened over the last week as a pretext for closing down speech, and demonising Trump voters.

This can only exacerbate tensions, particularly as Biden takes a back seat while Harris gets to work, no doubt opening the door for the woke social justice agenda, which will only widen the cultural gulf until the USA becomes ungovernable. More than likely the Republicans will return a strong candidate like Nikki Haley, which is bad news for the left because it will be a revenge regime and one a magnitude more competent than Trump. The left started the culture war but the right will end it. The main question now is whether America can bear what is essentially a sustained low grade civil war until this dispute is resolved.