It finally came on the eve of the Iowa
caucuses. A video emanating from the
Trump camp claimed that God had sent Trump as his “caretaker” to manage the
nation and the world; Trump is now a fully equipped crackpot American
politician with his monstrous deal-doing ego supplemented with a solemn Messianic
mission - to the evangelicals he is obviously unbeatable. Praise the Lord!
We have seen it all before. In 1925, populist 3-times presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan denounced the teaching of evolution in the famous Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee. Bryan was badly mauled under cross-examination and died shortly after the trial. H L Mencken summed it all up with characteristic verve.:
One day the defence lured Bryan into his astounding argument against the notion that man is a mammal. I am glad I heard it, for otherwise I’d never believe it. There stood a man who had been thrice a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, uttering stuff a boy of eight would laugh at….He came into life a hero, a Galahad, in bright and shining armour. He was passing out a poor mountebank.
May the same fate overwhelm Donald C Trump!
Religiosity (excessive religiousness) is one of
the most off-putting facets in American life to the British and European cast
of mind. We have mostly moved forward from defining our lives in religious
terms, some generations ago.
Billy Graham (1918-2018) was a hugely
successful US Southern Baptist evangelist who thrived mainly in the 1950s -70s.
He filled stadia, ran crusades and preached cooperation. He was certainly a
talented orator and he made friends with the good and the great. Eisenhower,
Lyndon Johnson and maybe surprisingly Richard Nixon hung by his words and
sought his counsel.
He was followed by a variety of black preachers,
notably esteemed Martin Luther King, and Al Sharpton is still around, agitating
at the first sign of trouble.
Britain has a tradition of sorts notably on the
Celtic fringes, Ireland has long been a religious hotbed (some of this
reflected in Joe Biden’s stubborn Anglophobia) and Ulster sported the
anachronistic figure of the Rev Ian Paisley – ye shall hate idolators with
an undying hate, he bellowed, although he mellowed later when he was forced
to share power genially with “reformed” IRA gunman Martin MacGuinness. Scotland
long had a bitter Protestant/Catholic divide but our current first minister Humza
Yousaf seems most engrossed in the Palestinian cause. He is Scottish-born,
raised as a Catholic but converted to Islam in 1977. His rival in the SNP, Kate
Forbes, is a talented Gaelic-speaking 33-year-old, who has been finance
minister. She is an adherent of the Wee Free Church, with only about 10,000
members, opposed to same-sex marriage and generally Puritanical and socially
highly conservative. Karl Marx got much wrong but he was surely right in saying;
Religion is the Opium of the People.
Moving on to terra firma from these ghostly
matters, I have been puzzled by the differences between London attitudes and
those of England more widely. Much of the difference derives from ethnic
background. The London ethnic split according to the 2021 census is:
White British 36.8
Other White 17.0 53.8%
Asian British 20.8
Black British 13.5
Mixed race
5.7
Other 6.2 46.2%
Note that White British are far from a majority
even in their capital city.
Much more representative are the statistics for
England and Wales from the same census.
White British 74.4
Other White
6.2 80.6%
Asian British
9.3
Black British
4.0
Mixed race
2.9
Other
3.2 19.4%
Viewed nationally, White British are in a
substantial majority, as one might expect.
Last night I watched quiz night on BBC 2 (the BBC
being reliably cutting edge on the betrayal of our country in my view). I
enjoyed Mastermind, Only Connect and University Challenge compered
skillfully by Clive Myrie, Victoria Coren Mitchell and Amol Rajan. These three
are excellent and I am all for a meritocracy in broadcasting.
Yet I felt there was an elephant in the room.
Let’s have Diversity but where are the Englishmen, the John Bull - Toby Jug-
pub dartboard – Morris dancing Englishmen? Remember that statistic above, 74.4%
no less. They may not be hugely talented in global terms but they deserve
better in their own country than sink schools, useless public services, poor
healthcare and crime-ridden streets. Let there be positive discrimination on
their behalf, proper preparation for the world of work, a welcome to our better
universities and their opportunities, the prospect of a decently paid career.
It is not too much to ask if we put our minds to
it!
SMD
16.1.24
Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2024
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