The Rabid Season

Once upon a time, in the middle of the last century, we in Britain had what we used to call the Silly Season. This was the period in the summer while parliament was in recess. Most of us who could afford it, including the politicians, went on our summer holidays. In the absence of government ministers to rant about, our national newspapers (for there was no such thing as “the media” in those days) spent much of their time twiddling their thumbs and inventing silly stories to fill their pages. Hence the silly bit.

So we were bombarded with stories about the doings of the crazed and eccentric, about sex scandals, ghosts and UFOs. Occasionally something would happen to burst through the silliness and disturb our shrimp-catching in the tidal rock pools of the Welsh coast, such as the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. But more often than not, the world minded its manners and left us in peace.

No longer, alas. There’s no time of the year when the news media, fake or otherwise, is unable to dredge up or invent some startling stories from somewhere in the world to keep us alarmed, outraged and entertained through the dog day afternoons.

However, while the silly season has disappeared, we do still seem to go through periods of outright craziness. I call them rabid seasons. We are going through such a time at the moment as we watch this year’s US presidential transition. This happens every four years between November 6^th and January 20^th. Those that involve a change of president are particularly rabid – even more so when the incoming president is Donald Trump.

The current interregnum has not disappointed. Since at my age I would be foolish to take for granted that I might see another year, let alone another four, I’ve resolved not to take the gremlins and goblins too seriously. So forgive me when I make a few observations about the current festivities with a certain detachment.

At the back end of last year, for example, we were apparently being overwhelmed by aliens. Why they should choose to swarm the skies of New Jersey is anyone’s guess. I would have expected them to descend mob-handed on Area 51 in an attempt to get their buddies back. But anyway, not a day went past without some video of mass ranks of multicoloured intruders on the horizon. Yet all of a sudden, we hear nothing about these strange creatures hovering over The Land of the Free. Have they gone away, or did their batteries run out? No doubt the truth is out there.

Then we have that well-known alien, Elon Musk, having successfully swung America Trump’s way, deciding it’s time to change the governments of the UK and Germany. I suspect he will find us and the Germans to be different propositions. We may be as susceptible to his lies as the Americans, but our saving grace is a layer of cynicism that refuses to allow us to be so impressed by Musk’s myriad achievements that we swallow his political bullshit without thinking. Will the Germans fall for him? That remains to be seen. But I suspect that their inoculation against lying demagogues is still strong enough to resist a foreign Goebbels.

Trump himself will be a continual source of amusement in the years to come. With his grotesque cronies – an assortment of alcoholics, psychos and conspiracy nuts – it will be an endless pleasure watching them stab each other in the back as they manoeuvre for power and influence. As for the Donald himself, he can be relied upon for at least one hilarious quote per day that highlights his supremacy as the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.

Of course he might be actually mean what he says. In which case I look forward to the emergence of a new tripartite world order, as the US annexes Panama, Canada and Greenland, along with Mexico and the Caribbean for good measure, while Russia takes back its empire up to the boundaries of the Warsaw Pact and China takes Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines.

To whom will we Brits belong? Well, we know that Elon has his ideas on this, so I’m thrilled at the prospect of having a vote in the next Presidential election, which will probably be in at least ten years’ time. By that time Donald’s brain will have dissolved into dribbling senility. All attempts to reconstitute him using one of Elon’s infernal medical devices will fail.

Oh, and a memo to Ireland: if you think you’ll escape absorption into Greater America, consider this. There are over 50 million Americans with Irish ancestry. If a minority population of Sudeten Germans was large enough to allow Hitler to annex Czechoslovakia, imagine what Donald will do after some canny Bostonian has started whispering in his ear.

Another delicious prospect is of the imminent battle of the oligarchs. The likes of Musk, Bezos and those shadowy billionaires nobody knows anything about tearing chunks out of each other will make great entertainment, especially when AI hoovers up the remains from the battlefield.

Looking further on, ask yourself this. If Americans who voted for Trump because he offered them a hope of a better life – through lower taxes better jobs and so on – are disappointed, on whom will they turn? Surely the swaggering tech bros who have broken cover and flaunt their devotion to Trump. Do they not taunt the have-nots, who see their prospects of prosperity reduced to ashes? Will not the demagogue who takes over after Trump take aim at the oligarchs, who have gobbled up an overwhelming proportion of the nation’s wealth? No doubt Vladimir Putin would be happy to provide a tutorial on defenestrating the wealthy.

It all adds up to a stormy ride ahead. For those who follow the machinations in the White House and other centres of government – such as Downing Street and the Kremlin – I heartily recommend a little light reading to soothe the troubled mind.

In Palatine, Peter Stothard vividly describes the plotting, scheming, flattering and back-stabbing that permeated the court of the early Roman Emperors. If we think the machinations at the modern centres of power are something new, Stothard’s account of the vipers and toadies on Palatine Hill striving to win the favour of the likes of Caligula and Nero will put you right. The Romans built the template – their successors are merely imitators.

And where will all this madness end? At times of maximum rabidity, I go back to the Classics. So I leave you with a quotation from Sophocles:

τὸ κακὸν δοκεῖν ποτ᾽ ἐσθλὸν τῷδ᾽ ἔμμεν’ ὅτῳ φρένας θεὸς ἄγει πρὸς ἄταν; which translates as “Evil appears as good in the minds of those whom God leads to destruction.” Or, to put it another way: “those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad”.