Porter’s Pensées

I’ve just watched a recording of Trump’s address to Congress yesterday. It was billed as 90 minutes long; but about half of that was taken up with clapping, whistles and screaming from the Republican side of the House. (The House of Commons is positively decorous by comparison.) The speech itself was just like his public campaigning speeches: repetitive, boasting, rabble-rousing, full of lies, revengeful, with no serious adumbration of policies, apart from ‘making America great’ (and all the rest) again, and anti-‘woke’ and anti-Biden rants. In other words, it was quintessential Trump. I suppose you can say it was a remarkable performance, especially by a 78 year-old; but that’s all it was – a strong performance. He’s obviously fitter than he looks, and than he ought to be, if what they say about his diet is true. (Burgers and French fries, washed down with Cokes.)

If only we – in Britain – could disengage from Trump’s America! Most of us Europeans are frankly embarrassed by many of the views being expressed by the top people there, such as JD Vance’s latest barb about Britain’s military capability, and his earlier ones about ‘no-go’ areas in London, and people being arrested for praying. And was it he or Trump, or perhaps Musk, who claimed that in a few years Britain would be the next Islamic country with nuclear bombs?

The reaction in the UK to Vance’s reference to Britain as ‘some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years’, was mainly that it was ‘disrespectful’ to our troops; who of course have fought wars over the past forty years, usually in support of the USA, and with substantial casualties. That’s obviously important to you if you regard ‘respect’ highly, as Trump clearly does when he describes Zelensky as having ‘disrespected’ the Oval Office by not wearing a shirt and tie to his meeting with Trump the other day. My main criticism of him and his rich acolytes, however, is of their ignorance, which I regard as far more dangerous – to the world – than their lack of respect; and which no amount of ‘respect’ can compensate for. It’s easy to see whence their falsehoods derive: from Fox News, the right-wing social media, and the last despot Trump has shaken hands with. They clearly don’t read widely, and only take in arguments or supposed ‘facts’ that confirm their prejudices. And that’s what fuels their stated views, and now Trump’s actions; meaning that US policy is now dictated by ‘social media’, in a way I don’t think it ever was before.

And of course Trump has more power than most other heads of state have today, apart from acknowledged dictators; revealed by the way he is wielding ‘executive’ powers that most of us never imagined American presidents possessed. What has become of the ‘separation of powers’ in the USA? Wasn’t that intended to prevent this kind of thing?  Shouldn’t all Trump’s draconian measures have been passed by Congress first? – I did two years of US history at university, so I’m not completely ignorant.  But those studies never prepared me for this.

Trump’s past commercial ties with Russia are pretty widely known – Google ‘Trump’s relationship with Russia’ if you’re not currently aware of them. He has clearly never been as brilliant a ‘deal maker’ as he makes himself out to be, and on at least one occasion had to be rescued from imminent bankruptcy (over a collapsed casino) by Putin-linked Russian banks. Those Google references document several other ways in which Trump might feel financially beholden to Russia; as well as suggesting that Putin also possesses a ‘compromising’ tape of him with a couple of prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. (I won’t go into the unsavoury details.) All of which has even been taken as evidence that he has been a secret Russian agent, no less, since the 1980s; in connection with which however I remember elements in MI5 suspecting Prime Minister Harold Wilson of being a Soviet spy, on the strength of his official visits to the Eastern bloc as President of the Board of Trade in the 1950s. So I’m reluctant to go along with the ‘kompromat’ stories that are supposed to explain Trump’s partiality to Russia fifty years on. That’s the stuff of spy novels. (Though it just might be true!)

But in any case that partiality can be explained without venturing into John Le Carré territory. Firstly, Trump has never shown any sign of being a ‘democrat’, in any sense, and so probably thinks nothing of the ideological divide that is supposed to separate the USA from Russia – or even from the old USSR. For him, ‘democracy’ is simply a game to be played, with few holds barred, and the ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ of it being its only point, irrespective of any principles involved. If he wins, or can be seen as having won, it will accrue prestige to him: which is the second major desideratum in his mind. A third of course is money, either for the USA or for Trump himself, which is why it was that ownership of Ukraine’s precious metals featured so early in his ‘negotiations’ with Russia. A fourth motive – connected with that – is his crude businessman’s view of the world, where everything is seen in terms of ‘deals’, suggesting to him that concessions to Russia constitute the best bargain a deal-maker like him can hope for, in view of the fact that Ukraine, as he brutally told its President, ‘holds none of the cards’. Further: it’s probably true that he does genuinely admire authoritarian dictators: the pre-eminent ‘winners’ in his über-competitive scheme of things; and is working – with his current domestic ‘executive’ measures – to become one himself. And lastly, there’s his crude nationalistic – even proto-fascist – ‘America First’ agenda. That, plus capitalism, and narcissism, probably sum up the man.

By his side, of course, he has his venomous vice-president JD Vance; who has his own reasons for loathing the Western liberal (or ‘wokeish’) values that used to be common to both America and Europe but no longer are, and which chime in with Putin’s deeply reactionary ones. Vance’s recent speeches, largely spun out of social media lies, exemplify this: with the notorious ‘culture wars’ now injected into international diplomacy for (I think) the first time.

All this said, we perhaps shouldn’t dismiss entirely the possibility that Russia might have some right on its side, on the question of Ukraine’s historical and legal status vis-à-vis Russia, and the ‘provocations’ the latter sees as having come from NATO and the EU. At the very least they can help us understand Russia’s nervousness. Foreign relations can rarely be seen in simple black and white terms, especially where ethnically and linguistically mixed populations are involved. Reaching back into history, the Sudeten Germans had a case of sorts in the 1930s, and the Schleswig-Holstein Danes in the 1860s. The same could be said today of Russian-speakers in Dombas and Crimea. This might be a better reason for taking Putin’s side on this question, and that of his new-found buddy Trump. That’s something that future historians are going to have to argue over, when they know how things turn out.

This is no reason for not defending Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression, of course. But a historian of conflict needs to see both sides.

Everyone who has followed this blog will know that I’m not a great one for attributing big events to individuals: what used to be called the ‘great man theory of history’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory). That ‘theory’ of course is more favoured by ordinary folk – it’s simpler and makes for easier story-telling – than it is by us professional historians, who are happier with complexity, and are generally more sophisticated in our analyses.

But what can we say in the age of Donald Trump; who in such a short time, and in defiance of the intentions of the American Constitution, as well as of most people’s understanding of ‘democracy’, has accrued so much power into his own individual hands? (‘Great men’, of course, can be evil too.) Some of that power – his ‘executive orders’ – may be challenged in the courts, and be whittled away at the edges. And those of us who remain reluctant to believe in the ‘great man’ idea still need to look at the wider historical factors that put this particular one into power.

For my part, the inexorable rise of unrestrained capitalism must be one of those underlying factors, personified today by the property developer tycoon with his techno-billionaire courtiers, and – on what used to be the ‘other side’ – Putin and the monied villains surrounding him. It used to be ideology that divided the ‘West’ from the ‘East’; now it’s a single ideology that is bringing them together. (That’s irrespective of whether or not Trump was ‘compromised’ in the 1980s by the FSB.) Putin is a dictator; Trump a wannabe one. They’re both bullies. Vide Trump’s openly-expressed support for Putin, and his grotesque public onslaught on Zelenskyy the other day.

But all credit to Keir Starmer for hugging Zelenskyy afterwards, ostentatiously but quite un-Britishly; and for showing leadership in spearheading Britain’s response to Trump (and the serpent JD Vance) the following day.

You’ll have seen this – everyone must have done by now. It even featured on tonight’s Swedish TV News. They called it ‘bisarra’.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114068387897265338

We don’t yet know its genesis. It appeared on Trump’s website. Did he order it? Or approve it? I think we need to know. It gives a disturbing glimpse into his narrow property-tycoon’s mind.

Bearded belly-dancers? A giant golden statue of the Donald? Elon stuffing food into his mouth? Souvenirs of a little Trump sitting on a golden toilet? A crotch-eyed view of him and Netanyahu lying half-naked on a beach? – ‘Bizarre’ doesn’t cover it.

If he did authorise this, the very least it shows is that he has no sense of humour, or awareness of satire; a fatal flaw in any human being. (Thatcher had it too.)

Starmer’s position on Ukraine – that he would support sending British troops there to keep the peace (whatever that means) – is a canny one from a domestic political point of view. For many years Labour lost votes for being seen to be pacifistic and hostile to the armed forces; which is quite mistaken historically, but an impression that seemed to be confirmed by the fact that the nation’s leader in World War II was the (nouveau) Conservative Winston Churchill.

In fact the true military men in his war Cabinet were often socialists, including the Labour leader Clement Attlee, who in World War I had fought at Gallipoli and worked his way up through the ranks to become a Major. By contrast Churchill saw very little action, and was given his high rank (Lieutenant Colonel) only because he was a toff. (See my Britain Before Brexit, 2021, chapter 8.) During World War II it was generally the working classes who were more solid in favour of that defensive war – as opposed to aggressive, imperial ones (see ibid. chapter 9) – with their MPs crucial to the removal of Neville Chamberlain, and his replacement by the warlike Churchill, whose own Conservative party was more equivocal on the issue, to put it mildly. Many of them (together, notoriously, with the Daily Mail) flirted with Nazism. So don’t be misled into thinking that Conservatives are always more patriotic, in this kind of situation, and the Left the ‘traitors’, or wimps. Sir Keir represents a strong Labour tradition here.

Trump’s problem – or, rather, our problem with Trump – is that he can’t think analytically. Or at all. He simply accepts what he’s told by his ideological allies, on Fox TV and social media, or by the last world leader he has spoken with. The most recent of these was Vladimir Putin, who sent him away with the ideas he then blurted out about Zelenskyi’s being a ‘dictator’, and responsible for starting the war with Russia. All of which must of course disqualify him from acting as an ‘honest broker’ – or a genuine ‘peace-maker’ – between the two sides.

If he had given any proper thought to the Ukrainian situation he would have realised – as all professional diplomats must – that the issue is far more complex than he assumes, and not to be settled by a simple business deal, or division of assets: Ukrainian territory to Russia, Ukrainian precious metals to the USA; and without Ukraine’s participation in the talks. Elsewhere, Trump’s suggested settlement of the Gaza ‘problem’, by expelling the Palestinians and replacing their blighted homes with Riviera-like hotels for the rich, comes from the same playbook. Which is entitled, of course, The Art of the Deal.

Indeed, The Art of the Deal could serve in much the same way as Mein Kampf did – or should have done – by revealing the minds of the putative dictators who authored them. (Or in Trump’s case presumably had ghost-written for him.) Trump sees all negotiations in terms of ‘winning’ (or losing) ‘deals’; with the narcissistic element of his personality wanting this to reflect positively and personally on him. (Is it true that he’s hankering after a Nobel Peace Prize?) This is another reason why he seems to have taken Putin’s side over this crisis: because it offers the easiest ‘win’, and profit, for him.

Whether this explains or even illuminates what is going on at the Russia-Ukraine border just now is doubtful. If Trump could think more analytically, or simply think, he might realise that life at any level, let alone this elevated international one, involves more than just ‘dealing’ in this simplistic way, but has broader human, emotional and historical components that also require to be taken into account.  A knowledge of Trump’s business brain is useful to understand how he approaches these issues, but not the issues themselves.

At best it may exemplify what I’ve hinted at once or twice in this blog: my economic-deterministic (Marxist?) view of our modern history’s being governed by the development of global capitalism; with the overt domination now of a couple of late-stage capitalists (Trump and Musk), and of their methods – businesspeople have always been impatient of social democracy – perfectly illustrating this.

Maybe Trump’s ‘deals’ over Ukraine and Gaza will succeed. I almost hope not.

Vice-President JD Vance’s speech on Saturday to the Munich Security Conference (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCOsgfINdKg) may have marked a crucial turning-point in recent world history. This is not only for its signalling of the USA’s disengagement from the defence of Europe after eighty years, but because of the rationale Vance gave for that decision. This went way beyond the best reason he cited – that Europe should look to its own defence more, and not be so dependent on American generosity – which may have a great deal to be said for it (I broadly agree); and which it now looks as though Britain and other European nations may be taking on board. (See https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gxgxl3grgo.)

But the speech was also important because of the deeper reason Vance gave for the split between them; which was that the USA and Europe no longer shared the same ‘values’ that had once united them. To illustrate this he focussed mainly on the issue of ‘free speech’, which he claimed was more under threat in Europe than it was in his own country; citing a number of alleged examples (including in Britain and here in Sweden) which – in my opinion – were at the very least distorted or exaggerated, and appeared to have been garnered from some of the furthest reaches of the Right-wing social media. Apparently these pose more of a threat to Europe than the military danger from those notable champions of free speech, Russia and China. This was quite explicit in what Vance said: ‘The threat that I worry most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within: the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.’ Here we have the ‘culture wars’ – which I used to dismiss as mere undergraduate frippery – fully armed and on the prowl.

This may exemplify a seismic shift in global polarities. For over fifty years we’ve been used to the great political divide in the world being the one between liberal (or capitalist) countries on the one hand, and communist ones on the other. In the former camp you had most of the western European powers, plus the United States of America, and various other lesser actors. On the opposing side there were Soviet Russia and its eastern European and mid-Asian dependencies; together with China, espousing a different version of communism; and other quasi-socialist countries scattered around. But then came the fall of Soviet communism, leaving that camp broken, and the leadership of Russia in particular seeking to re-establish its former hegemony without the ideological cements that had bound it to its former ‘satellites’, in both Tsarist and Soviet times.

It was then that the great change took place, with leading players swapping teams, and fighting on different sides. The obvious example is the new warmth that appears to be growing between those former political enemies Trump and Putin, with Trump openly expressing his admiration for Putin, and taking on some of the latter’s authoritarian characteristics himself. Vance’s speech can be seen as a sign of America’s distancing itself from its old European allies not only militarily, but also ideologically. This is why it was – apparently (the reference here is from Musk’s ‘X’) – so enthusiastically welcomed by the Kremlin (https://x.com/jcbehrends/status/1890721064390447356), which clearly shares many of Trump’s reactionary prejudices. And it opened up the possibility of a new global division, to replace the old communist-democratic ‘Cold War’ one, between – what to call them? Dictatorship and democracy? Authoritarianism and liberalism? Reaction and Progress? ‘Populism’ and ‘Woke’? – with the two combatant armies mustered differently, and Putin and Trump – a real dictator and the wannabe one – now on the same side.

There can be little doubt just now that the Right is winning, both nationally and globally, and highly dangerously. I can understand its appeal; I may blog about this later. But I’m beginning to despair of my world.

Excellent article here, from yesterday’s Guardian, but by an American-born Dagens Nyheter correspondent, Martin Gelin (https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gelin).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/12/sweden-risbergska-orebro-gun-massacre. – (If it doesn’t come up, try the Guardian website.)

They’re thinking of tightening their gun laws here in Sweden. The shooter in this case had four of them, quite legally (for hunting), including automatics. The Swedish equivalent of the American gun lobby, mostly Right-wing Sverigedemokraterna, is against any limitation; but I imagine the measure will go through.

He was obviously targeting immigrants, by the way. They were on a course called Svenska för Invandrare (Swedish for immigrants), or SFI. I took the same course myself when I arrived, as a sort of ‘refugee’; to little effect, I must confess. But it means that I could have been in his line of fire.

The hero of the Ayn Rand novel I’m struggling with presently, Atlas Shrugged (see https://bernardjporter.com/2025/01/30/ayn-rand/), is a railroad magnate. The hero of the one I abandoned a few years ago, The Fountainhead, was a builder.

Déjà vu? The two men dominating America (and the world) today can be seen as these two heroes’ modern equivalents. One is a technocrat, developing new ways both of communicating and of travelling (to the planets); the other is a real estate developer. They’re both very rich. Beyond this, both of them represent the highest – possibly the last – stage of global capitalism; as did the fictional ‘Howard Roark’ and ‘Hank Rearden’ in Ayn Rand’s time. Post-revolutionary Russia (Rand’s birthplace) is of course following a similar path; which is what makes Putin such a natural ally for Trump. And this is roughly the path predicted by Karl Marx all those years ago. Doesn’t this describe the essence of the situation we’re in today?

Trump’s obscene plan to turf out the Palestinians and turn poor Gaza into a luxury ‘Riviera’ resort for the rich could not have come from the mind of anyone but a modern property capitalist. The way that what is called ‘populism’ has played into the hands of this new plutocracy undermines – if it doesn’t destroy – any hope that Marx’s favoured solution, a rebellion of the ‘people’ against the plutocrats, will come about any time soon.

I’m still not very far into Atlas Shrugged – it really is a very cold and boring novel – so I don’t yet know how it ends. But I guess not well, from my wokeish liberal point of view.