Just six days into Der Fuhrer's reign of terror and I already cannot tolerate to hear his voice much less listen the mix of outright lies and ramblings of an mentally unsound narcissist. Indeed, I am overwhelmed with the urge to scream at the television or switch from satellite radio to disc rather that endure the foul miasma that is Trump. In such a mood it is easy to forget that outside of Putin's Russia which wanted America reduced and divided and neo-fascist groups in Europe, most of the world is feeling similar fear and disgust. As a piece in the New Yorker - have you noticed how the NYC news outlets hate Trump more than, thus suggesting that familiarity grows contempt - looks at the worldwide dismay and loathing. Here are article excerpts:
On Thursday, Donald Trump’s sixth full day in office, I asked a British friend for his initial impressions. Noting that the new American President had moved swiftly, signing executive orders to end Obamacare, complete the Dakota Access pipeline, and begin building the border wall with Mexico, my friend shook his head and remarked, “The real problem is it’s not just America, is it? The whole world gets Trump, whether it likes it or not.”
In Britain, as elsewhere, there has been a widespread sense of impending catastrophe during Trump’s first week as President. Much of the chatter revolves around his transparently vindictive spirit—particularly toward Obama’s legacy—and his customary ridiculousness. Trump has long been seen abroad as an absurdly cartoonish figure, a perception compounded this week by his insistence about the size of the crowd at his Inauguration and by his spokespeople’s use of Orwellian phrases such as “alternative facts.” The Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell routinely depicts Trump as a monstrous slug of a man, with a bloated body, dark-orange skin, tiny hands, huge pouting lips, puffy white eyes, and a toilet seat on his head instead of his helmet of yellow hair. The contempt for Trump spans the political spectrum: the premier cartoonist at the Murdoch-owned London Times, Peter Brookes, presents equally grotesque images of Trump.
[T]he underlying shock over the new American President is often palpable. Yesterday, a friend who is a prominent British journalist, and who has been reporting on Trump’s first week in office, sent me the day’s White House press-room handout. Marked “For immediate release,” the memo was titled “Praise for the President’s Bold Action” and featured adulatory quotes from various journalists. “Yes, it’s for real,” my friend deadpanned. “Worthy of Mugabe.”
The contrast between the media’s disdain for Trump and the Tory government’s craven pandering to the President is huge, as Trump might say. As Prime Minister Theresa May prepared for her visit to the White House this week, there was a widespread sense of embarrassment in Britain over the begging-bowl nature of her trip. . . .
The British will return from Washington with a little less dignity than before, but with their “special relationship” intact. Other countries are receiving more bruising treatment. Mexicans have been feeling justifiably offended by Trump for some time, but their sense of grievance has sharpened considerably since Trump’s gleeful Tuesday-night tweet that he would sign executive orders the next day to begin the construction of his long-threatened border wall.
As ever, Trump has laid down his gauntlet by tweet. Clearly, he intends to govern in the same way that he campaigned—for all the feelings of reproof that his diction and his opinions arouse in millions of people around the world. He will be motivated by his understanding that, in the modern age, branding is everything. Just as he made a fortune by cashing in on the Trump brand, Twitter’s hundred and forty characters allow him to exercise power with a minimum degree of actual statecraft.
[S]ince Trump’s victory, many of my Latin-American friends have sent me their heartfelt commiserations. Almost all of them compared Trump to the populist despots who have long dominated their region. Seen from sophisticated aeries such as New York or London, their politics have often seemed clownish and tinhorn. No longer.
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