Opinion

Tom Kelly: 2016 astounding but not unique

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly is an Irish News columnist with a background in politics and public relations. He is also a former member of the Policing Board.

President-elect Donald Trump
President-elect Donald Trump President-elect Donald Trump

ANOTHER Christmas has come and gone. I seem to be clocking them up quicker these days than a DUP supporting poultry farmer counting his cash from ash.

With Christmas, came my usual book haul which included political biographies about Clement Attlee, Ken Clarke and Ed Balls - who is now more famed for his gyrating hip movements than his political agility. I requested it because I can recognise the trauma of a man going through a mid life crisis.

Amongst my treasure trove of literature was the much acclaimed Hillbilly Elegy by rust-belt redneck turned Yale lawyer, JD Vance. The Economist proclaimed that "You will not read a more important book about America" and for those of us a bit closer to home the Independent helpfully added "a great insight into Trump and Brexit". Ironically neither Trump or Brexit feature heavily in the book but you would not know it unless you read it.

It's a good biography which gives you an insight into working class America from a southern and industrial rust Belt perspective but there's nothing startling about it as Americans have been writing this stuff for over 80 years. And to be honest, there are much better insights into the American psyche from much better writers such as Steinbeck, Salinger, Williams and Kerouac but these days in an effort to explain Brexit and Trump, journalists, writers, marketers, commentators, politicos and psychologists will push hard to fit any literary square peg into any convenient sociological round hole if it adds to a debate in column inches.

2016 was by any standards of modern memory astounding but it's not unique. Brexit was and is inexplicable in economic and political terms. It was fuelled by xenophobic nonsense and imperial fanaticism. Worse still, it was brought to life by a lily-livered Prime Minister who thought the public loved him as much as his mirror. The result in some ways was not so surprising but the fact that there was clearly no plan B when the referendum was lost was. It's the kind of shambolic British farce that led to the partition of India and Pakistan, Ireland, Cyprus and Palestine and the mythical land borders they created with the French across the Levant. The one size fits all solution to British territorial problems - create a border. Or in this case control our borders. Distrust in politicians isn't new - even for those who couldn't read Punch and Hogarth were taking the proverbial out of them since the 18th century.

We are now told that we are in a post truth era but the reality is that politics and truth only collide once in every generation. Remember McCarthyism that gripped America for six years in the 1950s had according to a Gallup poll in 1954 the support of 50 per cent of the American population. 30 per cent of Americans wanted rid of the head of the Supreme Court Justice Warren and it was reckoned that if put to a vote the US Bill of Rights would have been defeated. If it sounds familiar it should because tens of thousands of Americans from trade unions, law firms, journalists, actors and ordinary workers found themselves denounced by McCarthy and his supporters - one group of which was the Minute Women comprised of 50,000 middle class women.

Blue collar and rednecks are not alone when it comes to their prejudices or wilful ignorance. And the real fight today as before is against not a lack of intelligence but of wilful ignorance.

The incoming Trump Presidency will have incumbency but no moral authority. America's greatness will be in his mind but that won't matter to him or his supporters. They invented Disney and convinced themselves that McDonald's and KFC was healthy eating.

As we embark on a new year this is not the time for liberal voices to cower away in corners.

Liberal voices and the courts are needed more than ever to fight the base instincts of majoritarianism because sometimes we need protection from democracy.

Catholic writer and lay theologian, GK Chesteron wrote that the new year was the time "to find new soul and new backbone" and Tennyson, In Memoriam said "ring out the false, ring in the true". This should be our new years' resolution too.

In the brutal and beautiful autobiography of Dr Paul Kalanithi When Breath Becomes Air, the terminally ill consultant struggling in pain to face another day remembers the seven words of Sam Beckett: "I can't go on. I'll go on" and took a step forward. Welcome to 2017.