The True Doctrine
 |
| Conservatism’s new defender, Isabel Ayuso |
As 2020 limps to its end I see swarms of bats surrounding the frog symposiums that are advising the worm conventicle in the great corner of mud. The end may be near, but end well it won’t. This week’s Camino a Ítaca looks at the fall of the Great Cheeto and steaming pile of excrement he leaves behind. Click over to read the originally published Spanish version or read the English version below. Tambien se puede ver el original en castellano abajo en PDF.
The heathens are at the gates. Their sordid
encampments line the defensive walls of long-standing institutions, from the
gluttonous streets of Washington to el Pazo de Meiras, el Palacio de la
Zarzuela and the banks of the rio Cinca. Their long-planned assault will leave
no one, born or unborn, unscathed and no establishment untouched. Segregatedmadrasas run by smarmy Opus Dei sycophants are frantically looking for new sponsors and are
beefing up security. Even in the Sierra de Madrid, surveillance has had to be
stepped up at the Prince of Vallecas’ retreat in Galapagar.
Gente de bien in their desperation have been
seen fleeing across the Pyrenees en route to Switzerland with their passports
and bank books held firmly between clenched teeth. Those without the means or
Swiss bank accounts are being rallied to take up arms in their stead to do
battle in each new sortie of the culture wars.
With the impending fall of Christendom’s
greatest defender of conservative ideals, the twice divorced reality TV star
with a penchant for pornstars, a great howl of grief has been heard across the
conservative world.
In between shock, disbelief and outright
delusion, rallies are being held in Atlanta, Warsaw, Budapest, Downing Street
and la calle Bambú in support of the man who once proudly boasted that if
Ivanka wasn’t his own daughter that he’d perhaps be dating her. Like it or not,
conservatism’s greatest champion since Henry Kissinger and his network of
friendly dictatorships on the ‘right’ side of the political spectrum is going
to have to tell the movers how to pack up his vast collection of remote
controls and take-out menus.
Things look grim and losing the election might
turn out to be the least of Trump’s worries. Calls have been put in to the self-exiled former King of Spain about the best ‘clubs’ with dinner service in Abu Dhabi and tentative hotel
reservations have been made in Riyadh in case the FBI come knocking. This
season of the most crass Reality Show the world has ever known is coming to an
end.
The smoking detritus of the global
political landscape left in his oily wake reminds us where he’s taken us. A
legacy that leaves a world in which we see ideas that once would have been
called outright lunacy, now debated and even considered, rebranded as
alternative facts.
The art of lying is nothing new to politics
and politicians. Nevertheless, Trump’s incorporation of the dictatorial,
thuggish technique of doubling down on lies when confronted and then
threatening his accusers with veiled violence is something new to press conferences
outside of Pyongyang. And it works.
It’s a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed around
the world. Admirers copy his tweets into Google translate and paste them into
local contexts, railing against those who then challenge them. Chats from
high-ranking ex-military officials openly discussing killing off 26 millionreds, children included, barely register a blip in the media in the post-Trump
world. Opponents are now enemies and are to be dealt with accordingly.
Meanwhile, strategists working for the
opposite side of the spectrum plot to create Orwellian Ministries of Truth in
supposed attempts to stop the ‘fake news’ of their opponents.
Paraphrasing Ambrose Beirce at the beginning
of the last century, there are those who are enamoured of existing evils and
those who wish to replace those evils with others. The genie is out of the
bottle and with the brutal bleeding hangover no one remembers where the instructions
are to put it back in.
