Well, we’ve all survived the first 18 hours of the Trump presidency. In fact its gone rather well, so far. The sun still rose this morning, the tennis court still managed to accumulate sufficient fucking frost to render any play impossible, Tai Chi was still life-changingly awesome and no nukes fell anywhere in the world. So all is looking good. Except…

America’s in turmoil. Its almost broken. Like Britain was (is?) following the Brexit vote. Like Scotland was after their (no) independence vote. Because democracy is a divisive thing. Its not supposed to be, its supposed to bring the population together to make a wonderful, collective decision. But its only wonderful for the winners. For the losers it can be horrible. Sometimes it doesn’t matter so much. Sometimes it does. And it breeds a discontent.

So today there’s yet more protests. They had them yesterday, and they got a bit nasty in Washington. And today there are ‘women’s’ marches all across America and all over the world. Basically protesting against Trump. Because if you protest for women’s rights you are protesting against all forms of sexism and misogyny, most of which are frequently displayed or voiced by Trump.

But really, a protest against Trump is not a great idea, whatever you may think of the man. Because he only had one vote. So your protest is actually against democratic process, for failing YOU, or against your neighbours, colleagues, workmates and soccer moms for voting for the tosser in the first place. And that is the divisive bit. You end up protesting against fellow Americans because you think they’re stupid.

Trump’s speech yesterday was a lot of nothing. Same as all his speeches. He should have addressed the hateful divisions in his nation. Because that’s for now more important than jobs, the economy and foreign policy. Cohesion first, the shit can be shovelled later. Though the first shit he yelled about was ‘eradicating radical Islam from THE FACE OF THE PLANET’. A sentiment as noble as it is totally ignorant, naive and quite frankly pathetic. We know that Americans love a ‘strong man’, one who goes up to the plate, they love a John Wayne (even though he was a fucking ACTOR), Davey Crockett, men with guns.

To ‘defeat’ radical Islam would take a massive shift in a philosophical culture deeply embedded in millions of minds. One man with a gun, even a really big gun, can’t ‘defeat’ that. An army can’t defeat that. It would take several powerful people from within the Muslim world.

Ironically, even if Islamic terrorism ended tomorrow, there’s still 22 million psychopathic Americans who own sufficient weaponry to kill more innocent people than a hundred ISIS armies. Obama tried to do something about that and failed, its not really even on Trump’s agenda.

Early days,

Spurs at Man City. That’s almost bigger than a new Prez.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx