Someone on Quora asked “Why do
some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate
and witty writer from England wrote the following response:
A few things spring
to mind. 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 humor 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.
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.
There is never any under-layer of irony,
complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might
see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no
inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with
David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood,
Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an
underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled
rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the
Hutt of privilege.
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 sniveling 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.
So
the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans
look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he
seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little
distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is
what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other
people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’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. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In
fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from
human flaws – he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would
clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what…
have… I… created? If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the
boxed set.
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