Writer Nate White explains why British people dislike Trump but I think that the reasons he gives are more widespread and that many people all over the world share the same feeling.
Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
…And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
…[I]t’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.
Considering that the writer lives in the UK and thus presumably is not constantly bombarded with Trump news, he has pretty much nailed him.
Yes, it’s not just the British, is it? This is the bit that I’m constantly hammering on:
Isn’t it obvious? For more than 40 years, Republicans hammered and brainwashed the crowd that the only important thing in life is ‘stopping the abortion’ and that the most important quality in a man is his ‘money’. So, come 2020, the brainwashed crowd votes for one man who “seem” to have more money than other candidates and, while not caring about the issue himself, “seemed” agreeable to allow top conservatives to appoint the most conservative judges possible. Now, that he has done the last thing consistently (but screwed up everything else), the Republicans have ‘won’ but the people (not only of USA but of the World) have lost.
Rebublicans haven’t cared for a single one of those qualities in the last 60 years. They have introduced, selected and elected crass person after crass person in Nixon, Reagan, Bushes, Palin, Cheney, Ryan, RMoney (sic)….. the list is endless.
Their main strategy to win the elections (obsession with abortion) also made sure that all other qualities are ignored and they become a raging dumpster fire.
Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace
A good distillation of the essence of British class snobbery.
He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Ah, but his sarcasm soars far above the heads of the self-(corporate-)appointed pundits, journalists, and comedians!
/s
“A good distillation of the essence of British class snobbery”
It’s really not snobbery at all, and very much not class based. Most of my friends are solidly working class background and they’re all contemptuous of him for pretty much those reasons. Those qualities are absolutely not exclusive to upper classes, nor are they seen or stereotyped as such.
Marcus #4 and sonofrobjake #6,
Both right I think. British class snobbery does tend to focus on those characteristics, but it does so because all classes of British society find them generally valuable. What the upper class and especially the middle class tend to do is make out that their class is the one that exhibits them more than the others. Even many working-class people have a kind of inverse snobbery where it is working-class people who show the most charm, compassion, credibility, wit, warmth, wisdom, honour, humility and grace.
I think the humour point is the most on the money though. British people loathe nothing more than someone who takes themself too seriously and can’t stand having jokes made at their expense. Indeed, in the 1980s our biggest satirical TV show, Spitting Image, had MPs and public figures secretly send in suggestions of material for the satirists to lampoon themselves with. This is one reason we find foreigners’ constant attempts to tar Trump and Boris Johnson with the same brush rather odd -- Boris is a walking, talking self-parody, and well aware of it. He even manipulates his ridiculous overgrown public schoolboy image to appear more likeable. He first came to major public attention on the mainstay of British political satire that took over with the demise of Spitting Image -- the panel show Have I got News for You -- where he cemented his bouncy bumbling idiot persona for the nation. Can anyone imagine Trump doing anything like that?
(of course, the brand of cynical neoliberal Tory politics that Johnson represents is appalling in its own way, and shares some similarities to what the Republicans are doing over there, but the style and optics of the two men are very, very different indeed).
One thing we do find very odd indeed about American culture, and other cultures too, is the notion that being wealthy is something you would want to show off about, or that being wealthy means you have some kind of virtue or intelligence. Ours was never a Calvinist culture that preached wealth as a sign of divine favour, and between an aristocratic disdain for the grubbiness of the merchant class and everyone else’s disdain for the uselessness of the inbred aristocratic class, we never developed a strong cultural association between wealth and personal character. There’s a strong strand of anti-Catholic protestant puritanism in there too of course, and a few other things. But wherever it comes from, we don’t like people who flaunt their wealth or make a big thing of their success (real or trumped up).
cartomancer, very wry, that video.
Also, I can’t help but notice how Great American Satan has a rather different take — the post is on top of the sidebar right now.
I found the David Mitchell clip a little weird. Asking how much someone earns is one of the taboos of US culture. Or is that just a southern thing?
All this was obvious long ago, and it’s why I lost thousands betting that the U.S.A wasn’t so stupid as to elect him.
Personally I think his greatest character flaw is that he’s a coward.
Not all bullies are, but he’s a bully because he is a coward.
And it’s true -- he has no sense of humour, he’s not bright enough and too scared of the world to understand it.
Huh? Bullying — in every form — is everywhere in British society. And not just the lower classes. “Public schools,” the army — British literature is full of it. There would have been no British Empire if the population (people of all classes) had not been trained by bullying to willingly conquer, oppress, and massacre in support of British supremacy. What is present is the idea that it’s not genteel to be too obvious about it, at least not in social gatherings with one’s peers — though that only really applies to the snobbier classes.
Not to say it is unique to Britain: bullying — the use of power to overpower and degrade people who cannot fight back and cannot escape — is an essential component of a power structure, and power structures and hierarchies are the backbone of most modern societies. It reinforces and legitimizes the hierarchy in the minds of the bullies and the bullied, and trains people to accept and participate in violations of all kinds.
One reason schools have such a hard time dealing with bullying is that, with rare exceptions, their organization is based on power, and the largely arbitrary exercise of power. Some children want to go to school, and may even like it, but it is clear to all that, willing or not, they don’t have the option of leaving or of saying no to the adults. So commanding children not to bully one another amounts to a big “do as I say, not as I do.”
And here is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-UK40_XkWw"Penn Jillete's take, after working with Trump for a season of Celebrity Apprentice.
From the post title, I was kinda expecting an ad for a really nasty aftershave…
@cartomancer:
Heck, when Johnson was still mayor of London, he was a guest on Top Gear at one point.
@suttkus:
I don’t think it’s just a southern thing.
Of course, having it taboo to ask how much somebody makes is another way to keep workers from getting upset enough to try to organize. If people started actually comparing paycheques they might realize that the boss in fact always pays women, people of colour, or both far less than he pays other people.
@Allison:
That was one of my thoughts as well: bullying is very much a part of British culture, especially at the school level. You’re just also supposed to be smart enough to have plausible deniability about it, and that is something that Trump lacks.