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I just read this on Facebook:
Someone asked "Why do many British people not like Donald Trump?"
Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England, wrote this magnificent response:
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Morag Mitchell
17.4K posts
Morag Mitchell
@MoragMitchell3
Wife, mother, grandmother. Socialist morally and politically. No DMs. Delighted to see the end of the Tory government. #GTTO. @moraghm.bsky.social
Joined November 2020
- Replying to @MoragMitchell3A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, 2/
- Replying to @MoragMitchell3no honour and no grace - all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. Plus, we like a laugh. 3/
- Replying to @MoragMitchell3And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing - not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. 4/
- Replying to @MoragMitchell3And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility - for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is - his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. 5/
- Replying to @MoragMitchell3He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.
- Replying to @MoragMitchell3Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults - he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. 6/
- Replying to @MoragMitchell3There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. 7/
- Replying to @MoragMitchell3He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. 9/
- Replying to @MoragMitchell3And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. 8/
- Replying to @MoragMitchell3There are unspoken rules to this stuff - the Queensberry rules of basic decency - and he breaks them all. He punches downwards - which a gentleman should, would, could never do - and every blow he aims is below the belt. 10/
- Replying to @MoragMitchell3He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless - and he kicks them when they are down. 11/
- Replying to @MoragMitchell3This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. 14/
- Replying to @MoragMitchell3So the fact that a significant minority - perhaps a third - of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that: 12/