Armando Iannucci on Donald Trump: 'This is the best moment, isn't it?'
NB: An essay that would be appropriate for 'media managers' (truth managers?) in Mr Modi's government. Maybe one of them will read it, and get it. Maybe. DS
What you’ve done is started a revolution, a movement. You’ve taught people to believe not what is empirically true but what is emotionally true, which is a better truth. You’ve set free the credulity of the people. So here is another undeniable fact. Soon the consequences of what you are doing will spread throughout the world. And, once done, they can’t be undone. Yes, you will be remembered for a very, very long time. Fact.
Even when silent, you sound loud. You are, in fact, an avalanche of contradictions: real and unreal, scary yet amusing, fact and fiction rolled into one – like a little rubber Mount Rushmore blown up to actual size by the use of helium. You confuse us. We want to laugh at your stumbles, but are petrified by what those stumbles may lead to. You are the worst person ever; and yet not as bad as Mike Pence.
What you’ve done is started a revolution, a movement. You’ve taught people to believe not what is empirically true but what is emotionally true, which is a better truth. You’ve set free the credulity of the people. So here is another undeniable fact. Soon the consequences of what you are doing will spread throughout the world. And, once done, they can’t be undone. Yes, you will be remembered for a very, very long time. Fact.
Even when silent, you sound loud. You are, in fact, an avalanche of contradictions: real and unreal, scary yet amusing, fact and fiction rolled into one – like a little rubber Mount Rushmore blown up to actual size by the use of helium. You confuse us. We want to laugh at your stumbles, but are petrified by what those stumbles may lead to. You are the worst person ever; and yet not as bad as Mike Pence.
But you do have a
definite sense of purpose. While Hillary Clinton hedged
and played the game, you said it straight. You’ve been very clear: deport,
build, repeal, replace. Everywhere you go, you shatter ossified politics. You
slice through frozen convention like an icebreaker: set on a steady forward
direction, leaving a stinking slick of oil and dead fish parts in its wake.
It was worth it,
though, because of where you are now. This is the best moment, isn’t it? Just
as you’ve taken the oath of office, but still not worn down by that office.
Frozen in your moment of history. All those doubters, the mewling enemies and
haters, are silenced now: you are the 45th president of the US. That’s a fact.
It’s true. They used to tease you
about your attitude to the truth, didn’t they? All your post-reality
fictoid-facts, like how global warming was a myth invented by the Chinese, how
you respected all women without exception, except the greedy, grasping, ugly
ones who were trying to suck you dry, how Obama wasn’t born in America, and
also how you put everyone right when you said he was. And that rigged
election: you had evidence the election was rigged against you and you were
going to lose, and then, when you won it fair and square, you had proof you
would have won it even more fairly and squarely had it not been rigged against
you so you couldn’t win so bigly. And now they say the Russians rigged the
election, and you say the election wasn’t rigged, it was never rigged, and
you’ve been saying for months: it was never rigged.
Yes, you were mocked
nightly by damp-souled liberals who joked you couldn’t tell fact from fantasy.
Well, guess what? If you now tweeted, “I am the 45th president of the United
States”, not a single person would doubt you. Because it’s true. You’re the
president. Fact! No scientist, no economist, no so-called expert can call you
out. You are literally the most important man on Earth, in the solar system,
maybe even the galaxy. Right now, everything in the universe revolves around
you.
But then comes the
hard bit. The bit after this week. The rest of the presidency. That’s the bit
others say can’t be controlled. Something will go wrong. Some screwball no-mark
in some pointless department will answer a letter to an elector, and end up
saying the wrong thing about China, or single moms, or car manufacturers, or
dyslexia, thinking that they’re echoing your opinion. Then your enemies will
report it, and then people will think it came from you. Then your press
secretary will deny that’s what you meant and blame the no-mark, and name her.
Then the no-mark will complain about sexism or bullying or some such artificial
crime. Then you’ll act big, go against expectations, and apologise to that
person.
Then some other
people, your enemies, will imply you’re a pussy. Your staff who attacked her
and defended you, will express annoyance that you are contradicting what
they’re saying. Then the person you apologised to, well, she’ll get arrogant
and say how upset she was by what happened, and then you’ll have to tweet what
she was really like when you met her, how annoying she was,
how she’s just looking for a bigger job and a TV contract, and how you’re going
to ask Congress to look into that department she works for and find out what’s
going on.
But, even then, it
won’t go away, and there’ll be maybe a hundred other little, stupid stories
like that which will never leave you alone, all because other people are fools
and losers. And so one night, you’ll tweet something bad about China and single
moms and car manufacturers and dyslexics, all in one tweet, and the whole cycle
will start all over again, and take up so much time, it’ll look like that wall
will never get built.
And so, for the next
four years, you’ll try to do stuff. With luck, the next eight years. (If your
plan comes right, the next 12, even 16 years, too.) But this crap will keep
coming up, won’t it? This not-smart, so-overrated nonsense from the false
media, determined to undermine you. They’ll say you’re mishandling foreign
affairs, causing conflict and hardship, arousing enmity, bitterness and
division. It’s all designed to make people not like you, isn’t it? But you can
get round that. You will tell people, again and again, that they do like you.
That everything else they’ve heard isn’t true. And it will work. It always
works.
You will explain that
the things that come from your mouth are not necessarily the things that come
from your heart. You will remind people that things are true not when they are
real but when you believe them. You will urge the media to concentrate on
covering people’s fears and feelings, rather than the dull objects and
information that clutter up their potentially beautiful lives.
Why don’t crime
reporters report that people feel a bit funny about Mexicans? Why don’t
economists measure how freaked out people are about what might happen to their
jobs one day, especially if your enemies were in charge? Why don’t the weather
people point out, at the end of the show, just how everyone is feeling so much
better because of the work you’re doing, and how that’s making them cope with
whatever rain or cloud comes their way? Why don’t newscasters show the graphs
that prove that anyone who fires a gun in America might well be a Muslim?
Of course, the liberal
media will have fun, won’t they, doing their little crazy skits about how
there’s no need for reporters any more because we just have to say whatever it
is we think sounds true. “Over now to our Chief-Bad-Feeling-About-China
correspondent”; “We join our crime correspondent live outside the home of a
suspicious couple new to the neighbourhood who keep themselves to themselves”;
“And that’s all we’ve got time for. Join us tomorrow night at seven for another
edition of What The Hell’s Going On?” Unfunny. You haven’t seen these skits
(they haven’t been written), but they’re just so lame, aren’t they?
No, how you govern
will be so special, and so different from that pathetic portrayal. You’re going
to bring into your administration a whole heap of talented people who will
oversee a climate change in the way facts are considered. You will bring in
financial experts who will reassure everyone that, no matter what the markets
say, everyone is, in fact, fine. You will bring in law experts who will prove
categorically that anyone who feels their civil liberties are being infringed
are themselves infringing the civil liberties of the vast majority who voted to
change them. And, above all, you will persuade everyone, especially those who
tell you that you polled nearly three million votes fewer than Hillary, that
you do have a mandate – since you believe you do, and it feels like the vast
majority of people believe you do, too. And that’s evidence no money can buy.
That’s how you will
govern. Properly, effectively. Why, if the economy goes bad, or promised laws
aren’t passed, or a war breaks out, why spend time and money and precious
energy dealing with those things? Isn’t it more efficient to persuade people
that they aren’t happening? Think what money that would save, putting dollars
back in the pocket of every American. You will do a deal with the American
people, a great big beautiful deal, the ultimate deal, and they will absolutely
love it. What you’ve done is started a revolution, a movement. You’ve taught
people to believe not what is empirically true but what is emotionally true,
which is a better truth. You’ve set free the credulity of the people.
So here is another
undeniable fact. Soon the consequences of what you are doing will spread
throughout the world. And, once done, they can’t be undone. Yes, you will be
remembered for a very, very long time. Fact.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/21/letter-to-donald-trump-president-armando-iannucci
see also
The New York Review of Books, Volume XLIII, No. 13, pp 11-15, August 8, 1996
IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies. This, at least, may seem enough of a truism to pass over without comment. Not so, however. For the modern intellectual, it is not at all obvious.
Rabindranath Tagore's four-part essay on Nationalism (1917)
