Should we Worry About the Trump Phenomenon?
Donald Trump has evidently never bothered with a portrait in the attic. We can learn all we need to know about him by simply looking at him – the story of a lifetime’s self-indulgence and misdeeds can be read in his face. His body language, his facial expressions, his gestures all speak to a persona from which, if encountered in everyday life, we would instinctively recoil.
A Donald Trump in the flesh (of which there is no shortage) would immediately impress (or otherwise) as self-obsessed, thin-skinned, prone to use abuse as a substitute for rational argument – rather like an overgrown and over-indulged spoilt little boy. Listening as well as looking would reveal a trash-talking ignoramus with a propensity to embellish the truth and to respond to criticism with insults, particularly directed at women and those of different ethnicities.
A real-life Donald Trump, in other words, could not expect as a private individual to make many friends or admirers. Most of us would see him as a classic blowhard with little capacity to reach reasoned decisions – barely worth the time of day, let alone a position of responsibility, more likely to cheat and lie to serve his own interests rather than to take those of other people into account.
So how is it that, despite the evidence of their own eyes, so many seem to support him – even to like and admire him? The answer is a worrying one for our (or at least American) democracy. The explanation is that the Donald Trump that most people think they know is a cipher, not a real person. He is a construct, created to function effectively only in the public and artificial domains of politics and television.
I have always resisted the notion that politics is an arena in which anything goes – where the normal standards of good behaviour are suspended and should not necessarily be expected. It is surely wise to insist that not only should the same standards apply in public life as we would expect in private life, but that personal qualities that we would see as unacceptable in a private individual should be equally so if carried into the public arena.
Why, then, do so many seem to overlook the qualities that Trump parades before us – those of a boor and a bully and a blowhard and a cheat and a liar and a racist and someone pathologically disrespectful to women – qualities that would ordinarily lead most of us to react adversely to him? The answer is that Trump made his reputation and created his persona as a television personality – a denizen of “reality” television who learned that he could entertain by shocking his audience and could arouse in some a reluctant admiration through his willingness to ride roughshod over anybody who got in his way.
The Trump people see on the stump as a presidential candidate is someone who is famous for his catch-cry “you’re fired!” They have grown accustomed to laughing and marvelling when the objects of Trump’s brutal dismissals are discomfited and upset. Sadly, they seem unable to distinguish between the qualities needed to entertain them on a television show and those required of a political leader who must strike a careful balance between competing interests both at home and abroad.
As someone who spent several years of his life as a reporter and interviewer on one of the UK’s top current affairs shows, I recognise that there is a paradox here. It has always seemed to me that one of television’s strengths as a medium is that, at its best, it quickly exposes anything that is false or a sham; the charlatan does not usually survive long.
But that depends on the public’s ability to read what they see correctly. In Trump’s case, they have learned, as they believe, to “read” him – and they willingly transfer what they think they have learned to the quite different context in which he now appears.
The Trump they see as a potential President is, as far as they are concerned, “authentic”. He is behaving as they expect him to. Behaviours that they would reject as inappropriate in anyone else – and certainly in any other candidate for the presidency – have been certified as acceptable by his success as a television personality.
The consequences of this unfortunate lacuna in public perception could be dire for the US and for the rest of the “free” world. And we would be foolish to assume that we are immune from the same syndrome in New Zealand.
We do not, mercifully, often have to reckon with television personalities seeking elected office. But we are not short of television “stars” whose stock-in-trade is relentless and shameless self-promotion and a readiness to insult, shock, and offend, and who, once having attracted a viewing audience, then take the chance to deliver us our current affairs along with an unhealthy dose of more or less overt and extreme political views.
Donald Trump is, in other words, not the only threat to an effective democracy. There are those everywhere, and not least here, ready to emulate what some would see as his “success”.
Bryan Gould
6 October 2016
What More Can Labour Do?
The recent poll showing that Labour is losing rather than gaining ground will have been very disappointing to the Labour leadership – particularly because their improved performance across the board might have been expected to produce a lift in popular support.
The Labour party seems, after all, to have put behind it most of the deficiencies that have held it back. The parliamentary party is more united and has largely eschewed the kind of in-fighting that gave such a damaging impression of disunity. The front bench is competent and working hard, holding the government to account for its deficiencies, of which there is no shortage.
They have a competent and respected leader who is clearly demonstrating his credentials as a prospective Prime Minister. They have agreed a collaborative arrangement with potential coalition partners and are ready to remedy the oversights – such as the failure to focus adequately on the importance of the party vote – that cost Labour votes in the last election.
So, what more can be done? We should not assume that Labour MPs are necessarily best-placed to provide the answer. This is not because they are ill-equipped to do so, but because of the demands that our parliamentary system places on them.
As I know from my own experience as an MP (admittedly in the British rather than the New Zealand parliament), parliamentarians work long hours and are dragged in a dozen different directions at once. There is little time to reflect on whether the best use has been made of the available time.
The danger is that this leads to a focus on day-by-day events rather than new strategic thinking. It can lead to the conclusion that each new issue requires a new and immediate policy response.
There are of course instances of particular policies on particular issues moving opinion substantially. But elections are more usually decided by wider considerations – what might be called value systems – and, for a party of the left, and by definition one that purports to offer a vision of a better society, this is surely the most promising avenue.
This may be where Labour is falling short. They have perhaps failed to grasp that what they are really up against is a hegemonic force – a neo-liberal revolution – that has shaped political attitudes in western democracies across the globe for more than a generation and that now represents a norm so powerful that it is not even recognised as such by those who might be expected to oppose it.
This hegemony cannot be changed or challenged just by nibbling at the edges – by attacking short-term policy failures on specific issues, or by sharpening up campaigning techniques. What is needed is a fundamental statement of what the Labour party stands for, and a persuasive account of why it will produce a better and more successful society than has been delivered by the current neo-liberal orthodoxy.
Many of those who might consider voting Labour do so precisely because they are looking for a different set of values than those demonstrated by our current government and than are reflected in today’s New Zealand. The National government makes no secret of its belief that the market – which they see as the mainspring of economic activity and as an infallible moral arbiter of what is and is not worthwhile – must always prevail.
Many of our more thoughtful fellow-citizens, however, do not want a society where the bottom line is all that matters, where the market decides who prospers and who is left behind, where social and environmental issues take second or third place to the drive for profit.
They want to see a society which is stronger, happier and healthier because we have learned all over again that we are all better off if we look after each other. They are ready to learn the lesson, increasingly reinforced by experience around the world, that we do not have to choose between market efficiency and social justice – that those societies which fairly share the fruits of economic success also produce the better economic outcomes.
Labour should, in other words, be braver in taking on their opponents on these big issues – the ones that matter most. Yes, personal competencies, the correct policy options, campaigning effectiveness, all have a role to play, and Labour owes it to their supporters to get those things right.
But voters will feel more confident in voting Labour if they are convinced that a Labour government will approach individual issues from a consistent viewpoint – one that will give priority to the values of tolerance, mutual respect, compassion, care for each other, and a recognition that “we’re all in this together”.
It’s not that values are all that matter. The voters will still want to know what a Labour government might do, in practical policy terms, about particular issues, such as the housing crisis. But they will be more receptive to those policy proposals, and will understand them better, if they can locate them within a moral framework, if they are not just a solution to a particular problem but are an expression of a different and potentially superior view of how a successful, happier and healthier society might function.
Bryan Gould
18 September 2016
We Failed the Brexit Test
It might have been thought that the decision made by the British people in the recent referendum that they wished to leave the EU would have drawn a line under that issue, and that we would now be addressing the many new challenges and opportunities that are now before us. But, such is the arrogance of those who were sure they knew best that it now appears that the referendum was not so much an exercise in democracy and for determining the will of the British people as a means of testing whether their fellow citizens were really up to it.
There was, in other words, only one right answer, and the failure to produce it means that the test must either be treated as a nullity or it must be taken again (and possibly again and again) until the right answer is reached.
This determination to treat the referendum as an examination that has been failed has led one of the candidates for the leadership of the Labour Party to choose as one of the main planks in his platform a commitment to provide a second opportunity to achieve a pass mark. And, in the expectation that such an opportunity will arise, a huge effort is being made to ensure that the delinquents who got it wrong and voted to leave must be re-educated and shown the error of their ways.
So, we are subjected to endless stories designed to show how mistaken the decision to leave really was. Even the most improbable link between the Brexit decision and some real or supposed misfortune is triumphantly reportedly; headlines along the lines of “Brexit Means My Ingrowing Toenails Will Get Worse” are now commonplace in the pages of such as The Guardian.
There are, in addition to those whose superior brainpower and knowledge of the world enabled them to reach the right answer, others who are outraged by what they see as an irresponsible offence against civilised values. For them, the Brexit decision was a denial of their European identity and a bar to their ability to enjoy European food, music, art and travel – as if those pleasures were dependent on a particular trading arrangement, and were not part of our European involvement and identity since time immemorial.
Then there are those who profess to have been morally offended by what they see as the false prospectus which produced the Brexit decision. Yet, in the chorus of condemnation that has greeted Brexit “lies”, there is little reference to what was surely the biggest lie of the campaign – the warning by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, no less, that Brexit would mean a £30 billion hole in the government’s finances and would necessitate an emergency budget.
Many of those apparently angered by the democratic decision reached in the Brexit vote seem to believe that their particular sensibilities entitle them to ignore rational argument and the practical realities that membership of the EU has meant for so many of their fellow-citizens. Indeed, the offence supposedly committed against those sensibilities should be treated, it seems, as just that – an offence for which they and we must be punished. The greater the alleged penalties to be suffered for Brexit, in other words, the more satisfied the referendum losers are that justice has been done.
They are even able to welcome the presence of an appropriately stern prosecuting counsel – not to say hanging judge – in the person of Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission. This unelected official presumes to threaten retribution for the British people’s daring to reclaim some degree of self-government. It is a measure of how little understanding there is of such issues in some quarters that Juncker’s autocratic (and probably illegal) ban on discussions taking place between British and EU officials is not recognised as a striking example of the democratic deficit which continues to handicap European integration and to alienate British opinion.
There is, of course, a post-Brexit reality that demands all of our attention. It is already clear that the dire predictions of calamity have not been realised – and even the most persistent of the supposed downsides, the weakness of sterling, has meant for those with the wit to see it, a boost to British competitiveness of which the inflow of tourists is just one immediate manifestation.
Instead of looking back to an EU membership which constrained us in a straitjacket of austerity and the priority given to corporate interests and that precluded us from taking up economic opportunities on our own account, we should now be striking out for a new and dynamic approach to economic and trading policy. The qualities that served us so well as a self-governing democracy over such a long period can now be brought to bear – as soon as we are no longer distracted by the prospect of going backwards rather than forwards.
Bryan Gould
13 September 2016
How Was the Fortune Made?
As we read yet again of the huge gains by property speculators, are we not obliged to ask a serious question? Are they – or even more pertinently, are we – happy to live in a society where fortunes are made in the course of a single day from dealing in property while hundreds of thousands of Kiwi children do not have a safe, dry, or even any, roof over their heads?
We live at a time and in a place where to be rich and famous is regarded as the pinnacle of achievement. The rich – (the fame usually comes along as a corollary) – are admired and envied, not just for the lifestyle their wealth makes possible but also because it is seen as a mark of particular moral worth and social value.
These attitudes are sedulously fostered by the media, who enjoy a complex symbiotic relationship with the rich – largely because the media find it prudent to serve the interests of their owners and because the activities of the rich provide an endless source of copy. Even more significantly, the same attitudes are translated into political analysis; we have for some decades now been persuaded that the success of those who have made their fortunes is the key to a successful economy.
Even economic analysis has at times succumbed to the worship of the wealthy. The infamous “trickle down” theory – now largely discredited – postulated that if the rich did well, their wealth would, by stimulating economic activity, “trickle down” to lesser mortals. Our own government has stopped short of specifically endorsing this “crumbs from the rich man’s table” approach, but has been very clear that the rich are the prime movers in the economy and that their interests must come first.
None of this – which has been so important in shaping changed social attitudes over recent decades – takes much account of distinctions in the way that the rich make their money. They are usually all lumped together as economic and social leaders, all meriting the same thanks and congratulations from the less successful.
Yet there is now ample evidence that there are major distinctions to be made – at least in terms of the debt of gratitude that the rest of us should feel to our supposed benefactors. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist, in particular, has shown that the best way to become rich is to be born into a wealthy family. Even more importantly, he establishes that great majority of “the rich” are “rentiers” – that is, they do not create new wealth (as popular wisdom encourages us to believe) but simply manipulate their existing wealth in order to derive a return from it.
So much, in other words, for the moral virtue we are told we should attribute to the wealthy and the gratitude we should feel to them for the economic benefits they bestow upon us. Even more particularly, how should we feel about those who quite clearly do not contribute in any sense to the creation of new wealth, but who gouge their fortunes from the rest of us by extracting a disproportionate reward for speculative activities?
We (or at least some of us) might still feel admiration for those who are clever enough to spot profitable opportunities and then walk away with the booty – but at least spare the rest of us from any sense that we should award them medals for benefaction and social responsibility.
These thoughts are prompted by the increasingly frequent recent reports of the fortunes being made by those who speculate in the Auckland property market. We have ample precedents for the social and economic damage that such activities can produce. The Global Financial Crisis, for example, was the direct consequence of institutional involvement in highly speculative sub-prime mortgages, which created a dangerously unstable pyramid of debt and grossly over-valued assets.
And who could doubt that speculative activities of this kind now constitute the major risk faced by our economy, to say nothing of the housing crisis that has now placed a family home beyond the reach of many families and reduced others to sleeping in cars, tents and garages?
Should we not say that if the time has now come when excessive speculation fuelled by foreign investors must be restrained, the same is true of speculative investment from domestic sources as well? Not only are those who grow rich by such means – home-grown or otherwise – not entitled to plaudits as economic leaders and benefactors; they should be identified as those whose gains are literally ill-gotten and which come at the expense of the rest of us.
Every speculative dollar transferred into the pockets of speculators as the consequence of the million-dollar price of the average Auckland property has to come from somewhere – and the answer is that it comes from the rest of us. It is a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich and a major driver of inequality.
It may be difficult to convince our Prime Minister of this – as someone who made his fortune by trading on the foreign exchange market, he is unlikely to criticise those who make money by manipulating existing assets – but the rest of us might feel entitled to ask, are those who prosper by creating misery for others really scaling the moral heights and entitled to our respect and admiration or are they plumbing the moral depths?
Bryan Gould
12 September 2016
Are the All Blacks Special?
In sport, as in the rest of life, success is not always accompanied by applause and approbation. It can often attract resentment, envy and criticism.
Rugby is no exception. The unparalleled success enjoyed by the All Blacks over such a long period is most often greeted by sports fans around the world with praise, enjoyment and wonder. But there is always a substantial fringe of supposed rugby fans – usually from overseas – for whom that success is not to be celebrated for the skill and commitment it represents but is to be diminished and denigrated by those who cannot bear to see a team from another country garnering plaudits for its dominance.
Anyone with a stomach strong enough to read the readers’ comments that are often published following match reports in overseas newspapers will have become enured to the spiteful and churlish attempts to devalue the All Blacks’ performance. Many of these “rugby fans” profess to see in the ABs’ exploits nothing more than a willingness to play dirty and break the rules, and when the authorities mysteriously fail to agree with them, they take refuge in another bolt hole – the All Blacks, they assert, enjoy some sort of miraculous immunity from the usual laws and penalties.
Most such comments can be dismissed without a moment’s thought, since those making them are so manifestly lacking in any knowledge of the game or of its administration. But there are those who should, and do, know better, and who should be challenged when they persist in trying to make anything worth drinking from such sour grapes.
The last test match against the Wallabies, and the alleged “eye-gouging” by Owen Franks, provide a leading, and regrettable, example. We can perhaps excuse a Michael Cheika, desperate for something – anything – to divert attention from yet another defeat, for his attempt to focus on the alleged incident; and we can certainly agree that the footage shown ad nauseam on our screens demonstrates that it is unwise to allow a hand to get anywhere near an opponent’s face.
But what is less forgivable is the alacrity with which some professional commentators in the northern hemisphere jumped on the bandwagon, and enthusiastically supported a complaint that even the alleged victim did not wish, to his credit, to pursue. One could almost hear the sighs of relief from a Stephen Jones or a Brian O’Driscoll that there was something about yet another All Black victory that might allow them to comment negatively rather than positively.
Commentators such as these have form. They are both renowned for the grudges they bear against not only the All Blacks, but against the New Zealand rugby public and even against the country itself. O’Driscoll at least has the excuse that he was the victim of a shockingly unfortunate accident in a Lions match in New Zealand when he was the tourists’ captain.
Where he goes beyond what is reasonable, however, is his unwillingness to accept that his injury was caused unintentionally and was not the result of deliberately foul play, and that any complaint about its treatment should be laid at the door of the judiciary and not of New Zealand rugby. Instead, he has all too predictably used the Franks incident to re-ignite the charge that the All Blacks play dirty and have some special dispensation that allows them to get away with it.
Stephen Jones has no such excuse. As far as I know, the All Blacks and New Zealand have never done him an injury, either physical or metaphorical, but have instead treated him as a welcome guest when he has visited these shores. Yet the Sunday Times’ experienced rugby correspondent has returned to the Lion’s tour and the O’Driscoll accident in order to persuade his readers that the Franks episode is just the latest instance in a long-established pattern of All Black foul play, and blind eyes suffered not just by their opponents but by officials as well.
Jones’ comments might easily be dismissed as an aberration if it were not for the animus he has displayed against the All Blacks over a long period. His relationship with southern hemisphere rugby has always been somewhat fractious, going back to the early days of Super rugby which he dismissed as candy-floss, with little to commend it in terms of forward play or defensive rigour.
As to what that animus might be based on, we can only speculate. The best bet seems to be that – to do him some sort of justice – he lives and feels his rugby so keenly that he literally cannot bear to see the teams he supports beaten so regularly and comprehensively by a team from a small and faraway country. What he seems to seek is some sort of release or catharsis that allows him to excuse their defeats by attributing them to factors other than their own deficiencies or the merits of their All Black opponents.
The best advice we can offer him – and Brian O’Driscoll, who famously lost every match he played against the All Blacks – is that it’s just a game. It’s just that the All Blacks are very good at it. And did Malakai Fekatoa ever get his boot back?
Bryan Gould
5 September 2016