Porter’s Pensées

I have an addiction. Kajsa thinks it’s to my cellphone, which she sees me hooked on to longer than is healthy for me, or for our relationship. I recognise that this could be the sign of a psychological addiction, of the sort that has become common ever since smartphones were invented. But in my case the addiction is of a different kind. I’m addicted to any current news of Donald Trump and his America. I search for it on the internet the moment I wake up in the morning (when the previous American news-day, of course, is finished), and continue following it on my phone (trying to hide it from Kajsa) throughout the day – and the following weeks and months. No other topic has ever taken this hold on me, even football and cricket scores. It’s an obsession. And I’m not even an American. Am I alone in this?

And why should this stupid, ignorant, corrupt, narcissistic and I think deeply evil man deserve all this attention from me – and I’m sure from others? Of course he wouldn’t if he weren’t so powerful. And also if he weren’t so flawed, ridiculous and colourful. If Shakespeare were alive today he’d write a play about him: hopefully a tragedy; but that would depend on how things turn out. A Lear without the sympathetic ending? (‘Never, never, never, never, never!’)

I don’t suppose he’ll worry too much about this reputation, even posthumously. As I understand it – mainly from his niece’s memoir, Too Much and Never Enough (2020), and from his own Tweets – his sole ambition was always to be the most famous person in the world: the most talked about, irrespective almost of what was said about him. That he currently is; hence my fascination with him. His madness gets him ratings. As a former TV star, that’s clearly his measure of everything.

For the historian, of course, there’s also the matter of what this says about the present-day development of the USA more broadly and consequentially. More on that later, perhaps.

The radical reform that Gianni Infantino is proposing for the football World Cup – to ‘privatise’ it (to an extent) by selling shares in it to private investors – is yet another symptom of the seemingly inexorable advance of untamed capitalism and its mercenary culture in the modern world. (See https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/28/sport/fifa-world-cup-plan-angers-europe-uefa.)

I’ve written on this subject before, albeit mainly with reference to the English domestic game (https://bernardjporter.com/2026/06/23/the-world-cup/). Here we can see the same thing happening, but on a global scale: our ‘People’s Game’ being transformed into an investment opportunity for the rich. I imagine that Infantino’s great buddy Donald Trump may have had a hand in this. He’s already tried to influence one match: persuading FIFA to overturn a (maybe harsh) red card against an American player, against the ‘spirit’ of FIFA’s rules. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Trump%E2%80%93FIFA_red_card_controversy.) You can see from this what can happen when important stakeholders are given special influence over any sport. (And Trump was, or at least considered himself to be, the largest stakeholder in this year’s World Cup. Hence his notorious hogging of the limelight at the celebrations after the final game.)

The good news, however, is that UEFA (European football’s governing body) has so very rapidly dissociated itself from the plan, even threatening to boycott any future World Cups if it were ever implemented; followed by most other regional football associations. Infantino might not remain in his €5 million p.a. job for much longer. That would represent a clear victory for the People’s Game; and possibly a small but significant setback for the encroaching Leviathan of late-stage global capitalism.

The Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – ought to be considered parts of Scandinavia, but rarely are, because of the way history has impacted on them. By ‘history’, of course, I mean Russia, especially in recent years when the three republics were all colonies (effectively) of the USSR, and separated politically and socially both from the Nordics, and from the rest of Europe, by the ‘Iron Curtain’.

The Russian influence is still there, its language and script featuring by the side of the three countries’ own distinctive tongues on public notices; as well as in the gorgeous – or garish; take your pick – Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Talinn, built at the turn of the last century, with its onion domes, icons, capped and heavily bearded priests, and all the rest of that Orthodox nonsense. Of more recent provenance is a prominent copper plaque on a Tallinn city wall celebrating Boris Yeltsin, of all people, for the part he is alleged to have played in supporting Estonian liberation in 1991. Otherwise the Soviet period does not appear to be remembered fondly. Russian influence on the built environment of the Baltics is reflected in their dull concrete apartment buildings, which locals usually denigrate as ‘Soviet style’, although I’ve seen similar, or worse, in Britain. (They’re a global 1960s period phenomenon, rather than a communist one.) Otherwise it’s worth visiting there for the medieval, Hansa ‘Old Towns’ of Riga and Tallinn; and for the beer. (Not so much the food, unless I chose badly.)

Otherwise life there appears (and I’m only judging by appearances – we’re just back from a fortnight’s trip there) very Scandinavian; pretty Social Democratic, and even more ‘modern’ if anything than Sweden: with highly advanced technologies, and driverless wheeled robots trundling around the Tallinn streets delivering things. Can we credit all this to their new (2004) membership of the EU? Or to American investment? Or propaganda? Or are there skeletons buried there, cleverly hidden from mere tourists?

Anyway, these seemed to us to be the new post-Soviet Baltics; which Times journalist Oliver Moody, in his recently published Baltic: The Future of Europe (2025), suggests might serve as a model for the rest of us. So long, that is, as Putin’s ambitions to resurrect the old Tsarist or Communist empires there can be resisted. Moody thinks that with Putin in power the Baltic may become the fulcrum of global geopolitics – and perhaps warfare – in the future; as it was for substantial periods in the past two centuries. (Halford Mackinder obviously comes to a historian’s mind.)

Here’s Trump’s pre-Independence Day speech yesterday, in front of the huge iconic carvings of four of his presidential predecessors on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pfGOBUsHwU. (Sorry about the adverts; but you should be able to be able to skip them.) Apparently he’s hoping to have his own mug added to theirs eventually: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SWhfmwonUK8). As to that, of course we’ll have to wait and see. We may think it unlikely; but remember that there are virtually no limits to what in America private wealth can achieve. I’m sure that Elon Musk would donate a few million bucks.

In the meantime the speech is worth studying closely: partly for the egregious errors and lies that lie within it, but much more for what it says about Trump’s vaunting ambition, and the picture he paints of the essential American ‘culture’ that he sees as lying at the root of the US’s ‘greatness’ under him. In the first place, of course, that culture is ‘exceptional’. In fact this is one of the best utterances of the decades-old doctrine or myth of ‘American Exceptionalism’ that I’ve ever come across. It’s also heroic; ‘white’ and masculine, and so implicitly racist and sexist; individualist; very capitalist, but also God-fearing (the Judaeo-Christian God, of course); even ‘miraculous’; and the agency of every good that has ever been done by any nation throughout the world. It’s also bound to triumph over all the evil challenges that are currently besetting America; the most fearsome of which is ‘communism’, which I was surprised to see raising its hoary head again so long after McCarthy, and America’s more recent victory (hers alone, according to Trump) over the Soviets in the Cold War.

But American culture is also being undermined (it’s claimed) by those who are presently doubting America’s moral greatness, by emphasising the ‘merely human’ mistakes she has made along the way, like slavery and the genocide of the native Americans – far too much attention to which is being given by, for example, academic historians and the Smithsonian Institute, than is helpful for the sustenance of the proper sense of patriotism that is necessary to project what Trump promises to be America’s ‘Golden Age’, into the future. That’s once all the immigrants – the main carriers of communism and every other evil – have been forcibly turned away, and domestic communists – amongst whom he includes ‘libtards’, social democrats and even the entire ‘Dumocratic’ Party – have been exiled. Yes, he really means this.

If a granite likeness of Trump’s head does emerge on Mount Rushmore in the future, it will be a sign that this is the route that America has chosen to take after today. Future historians will study yesterday’s speech as a foundational document for the (quasi-) fascism that may follow it: a rather longer, and less coherent, Gettysburg Address for our times.

On the other hand, I’m still convinced that there is hope; as there usually is where the US is concerned. See my last Post.

Can it be that Trump is already on his way down? I don’t mean all the way to Hell, necessarily; although I imagine they’re waiting eagerly for him there.

But his ‘approval ratings’ in the latest polls seem to be sliding  (https://trumptimer.us/approval-rating/), with most commentators predicting a come-uppance in the mid-term elections. His ill-chosen Iran war is not going too well. His vanity projects in Washington – the East Wing ballroom, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and his ‘Arc de Trump’ – are all stalling. The US economy is stuttering. He’s suddenly starting to lose cases in the courts. His corruption is becoming blatant. His wife no longer lives with him. A few erstwhile Republican supporters are peeling away. The Pope has turned against him in a big way. Most of the rest of the world is mocking him mercilessly. He looks quite ill, and is sounding demented. And – for all I know – he might be losing at golf. – As he declines he pulls his nation down with him, with its reputation – for  ‘greatness’, if you will – probably being lower now than at any time since World War II. So much for ‘MAGA’.

That’s the impression I get, from internet news, albeit algorithmically selected, I imagine, to suit my prejudices. When you hear Trump himself, you’re left with an entirely opposite picture. I imagine he’s served with rather different algorithms.

I welcomed Keir Starmer as Labour’s leader, and now Prime Minister (if only for a few more weeks). I didn’t agree with all his policies; but he seemed solid, rational and decent, in contrast to all the Prime Ministerial crap we in Britain have had to put up with over the last decade.

I can understand why Corbyn was a No-No – indeed, personality-wise a gift to our scrofulous popular press. But I was hoping that Starmer might take on some of his policies, and give them a veneer of lawyerly respectability. That was probably always too much to ask of him with respect to the burning contemporary issue of Israel-Palestine; if only in view of his Jewish family (wife and children). But his government’s labelling of ‘Palestine Action’ as a ‘terrorist’ organisation, resulting in grotesque custodial sentences for some of those protesting under its name (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/12/palestine-action-activists-sentenced-terrorists-damage-elbit-systems-uk-israel), left me somewhat disenchanted. I nonetheless stuck with him, for his other qualities; perhaps because of my vocation. After all, we academics also aim to be quite lawyerly – careful, rational and objective. And I don’t feel I need to agree 100% with the politicians I vote for.

I’m not yet clear where Andy Burnham (assuming he’s Starmer’s replacement) stands on this, or on most of the other great political issues of the day. He seems to have been a wise, effective and popular mayor of Greater Manchester; a big job, certainly, but not necessarily the best training for running a country. (Look at Boris.) As I understand it, one of his mayoral achievements was the municipalisation of the bus network there, which may signal a wider transfer of utilities into public ownership under him, thus beginning the unravelling of Margaret Thatcher’s mad privatisation enterprise, from which many of our present ailments spring. Rumour has it that he will make Ed Milliband – a keen environmentalist – his new Chancellor, which I’d obviously welcome. (See https://bernardjporter.com/2026/04/22/keirs-mandy-problem/.) We’ll just have to wait and see.

He’ll have a lot more than this on his hands. The present doesn’t seem to me to be a ‘normal’ moment in Britain’s political history, or a crisis that’s confined to this country; but rather a hugely significant one world-wide. It may turn out to be an existential threat to ‘democracy’ as we understand it; with the USA, for example, fast falling into authoritarianism, and even a kind of capitalist fascism, under Trump. The historical precedent everyone is currently citing is Germany in the 1930s. That’s not a comparison I’m willing to make; but we should remember that Nazism didn’t start with gas chambers.

On the other hand Orban’s recent defeat in Hungary, and Trump’s declining popularity in the USA, may be more cheerful auguries. And we’ve still got the World Cup to distract us. Who cares about existential problems while that’s going on?

Incidentally: here on our Swedish island we’re having to cope just now with an invasion of wild boars, no less, digging up lawns and gardens – for what? roots? – and looking pretty ugly, with those nasty little tusks. (I think. I’ve not seen one yet.) How did they get here? Can pigs swim? And are they fascists too? (They were in Orwell’s Animal Farm.)

I remember seeing at a football match – it was probably a West Ham game; if so it was very apt – a huge banner unfurled in one of the stands, reading: ‘FOOTBALL: CREATED BY WORKERS, STOLEN BY CAPITALISTS.’ (Or a slogan to that effect. I’m not certain of the exact words.)

I’ve alluded to this idea before in one or two of my posts on this site, with special reference to my beloved ‘Hammers’: who were ‘stolen’ several years ago by a sleazy little capitalist who had made his fortune in the ‘porn’ market – see https://bernardjporter.com/2026/06/11/soccer/. But I wasn’t fully aware of the broader, global dimension of this capitalist takeover of our ‘beautiful game’, until I read Jules Boykoff’s Red Card. The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine; my prepublication copy of which reached me a couple of days ago. It’s a pretty devastating investigative journalist’s account of the highly corrupt machinations of FIFA – the sport’s governing body – and of its president, Gianni Infantino; who together with Donald Trump – the recipient of Infantino’s ludicrous ‘FIFA Peace Prize’ (in compensation for his not getting the Nobel one) – are behind the over-priced tournament which is going on in the USA, Canada and Mexico right now.

I’m watching it, of course, on the telly from Sweden. I’m sorry that Sweden came a bit of a cropper yesterday. (And with an English – and ex-West Ham – trainer, too!) Tonight we’ll see whether England (with a German trainer) can get past its former colony, Ghana. But the corruption of the game at all levels has, I must say, rather sapped my enthusiasm for it.

What I still like about it, however, is how multi-racial most of the European teams are. Can that be credited to capitalism?

PS. Oh my God. News just in: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/fifa-president-trump-world-cup-finals-b3001390.html?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=editorial-push.

We’ve seen this in Britain, haven’t we: so-called ‘anti-semitism’ being ‘weaponised’ against Leftists, dishonestly, by the Right-wing media? In Britain’s case it was Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party that was targeted in 2015-19, to damaging electoral effect.

I’m sorry to say that it’s happening here in Sweden too. (I’ve posted about this before: https://bernardjporter.com/2025/04/11/leftist-anti-semitism-in-sweden/.)  A major difference however is that the Swedish newspaper Press, being fairer and more decent at almost every level than Britain’s tabloid or ‘Yellow’ variety, is far less implicated. Additionally, Sweden has agencies that police this sort of thing; one of which has recently concluded that the Left is the least anti-semitic of all the political groupings in the country (https://www.dn.se/sverige/nya-rapporter-om-okad-antisemitism-vanstervaljare-langt-fran-varst/). A similar 2017 study in Britain came to much the same conclusion, but without making much of a dent in the public’s perception, as directed by the popular press (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_British_Labour_Party).

All of which makes me glad to be living in Sweden just now. Although – trigger warning – that may change soon. There are signs on the political horizon here of a shift Rightwards, which may turn out to be more ominous for Swedish Jews, immigrants (like me) and other minorities, than a confected Vänster parti that has always been our friend. I may post on this later; hopefully not to confirm my fears.

Cage-fighting seems an odd way to celebrate the USA’s 250 years of independence. And displayed on the South Lawn of the venerable and much respected White House, it seems almost irreligious.

I have to say I knew very little about the sport, apart from the fact that it is violent and involves two half-naked men battering each other, with – as I understood it – almost no rules to confine their brutality. So I Googled it, and found this: https://ucmma.tv/the-rules-and-regulations-of-cage-fighting/. Well, I suppose it’s comforting to know that ‘eye-gouging’ is disallowed. But otherwise cage-fighting seems pretty uncivilized; a bit like bare-knuckle boxing in Britain’s olden days. (And apparently being revived there today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bare-knuckle_boxing. Perhaps Keir Starmer might like to set up a bout in Downing Street?)

The display yesterday was the idea, of course, of President Trump; meant as a birthday present to himself (he turned 80 the day before) as well as to the 250 year-old American Republic. Other presidents would have engaged an opera singer or two; or a choir singing the Star-Spangled Banner (the tune cribbed originally, of course, from a British drinking song); or a theatrical recitation of the Declaration of Independence; or Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man; or a ‘Negro’ Spiritual; or a jazz classic. Or at the very least a scene from Hamilton, the Musical. – But no. Trump chose instead two sweaty heavily-muscled men pummelling and kicking each other into submission (here’s a few examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rY26BxpylE); as a celebration of – what? the American Constitution? Democracy? Equality? Justice? Unity? Christian values? Trump’s values?

Obviously it’s the last of these. As well as the clear Trumpian characteristics it reflects – cruelty, brutality, conflict, lawlessness, amorality, coarseness, individualism, machismo (that above everything) – it also symbolises his view of the whole of life as a contest, from which there are only two outcomes: you’re either a ‘winner’ or a ‘loser’ in it. Hence Senator McCain was a ‘loser’ because he was captured by the Vietcong; the patriotic military personnel buried in Arlington Cemetery were ‘losers’; journalists he dislikes are all ‘losers’; women – one suspects – are losers by virtue of their gender; and Jesus Christ would have been a ‘loser’ if he hadn’t been miraculously resurrected to serve Trump.

I wasn’t interested enough in Trump’s extravaganza to find out who emerged from it as the winners and losers: thumbs up or thumbs down, to employ the symbolism of the ancient Imperial Roman gladiatorial contests which – as many have pointed out – Trump’s cage-fights so closely resemble. Nor do I know what their prizes were. Congressional Medals, perhaps?

What I do know, however, is that the whole show demeaned the American Republic, or at any rate the best of that country; which as a former resident I have long admired (the best of it, that is), and still cling to a sliver of hope that it may re-emerge from this dark Trumpian tunnel soon.

Most people professing a religion have been born into it. That makes it less a matter of choice for them than of accident. For others it may be a question of compulsion, enforced by theocratic states.

For all of these, and also for more genuinely voluntary adherents, it’s also a tribal thing, giving them the comfort and security of belonging to a group, often – though not always – directed against other tribes; usually other faiths, as in the Crusades, but even against those supposedly professing the same religion: Protestants against Catholics, Sunni versus Shia, Orthodox against Progressive Jews, and so on. It’s hard for us agnostics to understand this – what on earth does it matter if the communion wine after the priest has done his mumbo-jumbo over it really is Christ’s blood or not? – but there it is. But that only makes it the more likely that issues like transubstantiation are not the ones at the root of ‘religious’ differences, but more common-sense practical and often political ones. (To be fair, I don’t imagine that even most of the religiosi would disagree.)

Religion can also be perverted, in the interest of politics, again. The most recent example is the way ‘Christian Nationalists’ in the USA have totally misunderstood what appears to me (I was brought up a Methodist) to be Jesus’s pretty clear teaching on matters of individual and social behaviour – love your neighbour, welcome the foreigner, turn the other cheek, swords into ploughshares, and so on – in order to harness it to some very un-Christian causes and people. I’m thinking here of course of those ‘MAGA’ Republicans who seem genuinely to believe that Donald Trump was sent by God to ‘save’ America, or to ‘make her great again’, or whatever; or even that he is Jesus Christ in His Second Coming – a famous image of which he must have liked because he reposted it himself, before being made aware of its blasphemy (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17v8y0z9z2o). This has famously gotten him and the entire MAGA movement into deep trouble with the American-born ‘Woke Pope’ Leo XIV, the head of one of the main Christian churches; who some Trumpists are claiming doesn’t understand Christianity as well as they do.

Is this what is taught in the ‘Bible Belt’ these days? Tribal rather than more liberal Christianity? The Old Testament rather than the New? Is it significant that the bits of the Bible that Southern Christians want compulsorily plastered over all schoolrooms are the Ten Commandments (OT: Exodus 20), rather than the Eight Beatitudes (NT: Matthew 5:3-12)? In other words, are America’s famous ‘Judeo-Christian’ values more ‘Judeo’ than ‘Christian’? That might help explain her diplomatic and military closeness to Israel.