the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Well that was certainly an unexpected turn of events, unexpected that is, to anyone who hasn’t been paying attention to politics since they were born. I refer of course to the news that in the US, senior Republican’s have tuned on Trump, reversing their previous defence of the President against impeachment proceedings.

Their sudden realization that the result of cross-fertilizing a bad tempered orangutan with Arthur Daley had somehow become the president had nothing whatsoever with them calculating he’d become the political equivalent of Heineken. In 2016, Trump managed the seemingly impossible, and convinced large swathes of the politically marignalised to vote for him. How exactly this billionaire hoodwinked the disenfranchised to vote for him is an enduring mystery, but vote for him they did, and so, like Heineken, he revived a largely ignored increasingly dismissed electoral base. Of course he did,, Trump represented the best voice they’d heard in years of elections, years when they hadn’t voted – hell years when them not voting was seen as confirming just how right the political establishment was in ignoring them in them. Trump beating Hilary Clinton in 2016 was yet another example of people voting the wrong way, people acting without first reading the script.

But like Heineken, his time passed, and in the same way as someone who’s had too much Heineken, he became increasingly unstable and therefore a political liability to others. One has to ask then, when did these same senior Republicans who are withdrawing their support for Trump decide the game was up? What changed? Only a cynic of the very highest order would suggest that their sudden commitment to democratic norms has anything to do with him having a week left in office anyway? And that if .the impeachment process does find him guilty, he’ll be unable to run for President in 2024.

Like so many other political leaders before him, once he was seen a political liability rather than an asset, the inevitable happens. The sharks smell blood in the water; move in for kill and a feeding frenzy begins.  

As bizarre circumstance would have it, I started watching ‘House of Cards’ yesterday, the Netflix version. It rather bears out the political truism that everyone is expedient, that everyone can – and ultimately will – be replaced. As soon as Kevin Spacey was seen as toxic, ratings kryptonite, he was dropped.

However, lets move away from such tawdry business and instead enjoy the Euro-Disco bubblegum pop that is ‘Dolce Vita’ by Ryan Paris. I hadn’t realised how cheap and rank the video is, made in a time when that sort of thing, filming as many attractive girls as you could to hide the fact you only had two days to shot the video, was considered viable optionActually, it sums up Trump perfectly; crass, sexist, and hopefully, a one hit wonder.