Bullying the weak to kiss Trump’s ass

Donny the schoolyard bully and his two cronies, Jaydy and Winky, rough up Zelly, a smaller boy, swinging fists knocking the wind out him, bloodying his nose and blackening his eye. The contents of the victim’s school bag have tipped out onto the ground. Heavy boots trample Zelly’s lunchtime sandwiches into the muddy pavement.

Vladdy the baddie, an older lad from the neighbouring high school, looks on approvingly from across the street. Donny catches his eye and nods deferentially. Donny is doing well, well coached from his time as sidekick while Vladdy had himself been top dog in the junior school.

Other junior school pupils look on nervously in awe and fear. Donny looks over at one of them. “Orby, I’m thirsty. Go to the store and get me soda.”

Orby scampers off compliantly. Donny gloats about the 75 schoolkids, who, seeing what happened to Zelly, are falling over themselves to kiss his ass.

Some years have passed. Donny walks into the local bar, nodding over towards Vladdy, who empties his glass. “Vodka, make it a double,” says Vladdy. Donny nods to the bar tender in agreement.

“And a milkshake,’ adds Donny. Vladdy curls his lip in disdain at his choice of beverage.

The television is showing Fox News coverage of a Donald Trump election rally.

“He’s our guy,” says Vladdy.

“Yeah,” Donny concurs. “Talks our language.”

Donald Trump, now president of the United States, is on the golf course as stock and bond markets go into meltdown following his announcement of gigantic tariffs that have triggered a global economic collapse.

“Mr President, a call from Bongo Mtutsu,” says an aide, holding out a mobile phone.

“Who is he?” Trump enquires.

“President of Umbendi.”

“Where’s that?”

“Central Africa.”

Trump grins in satisfaction. “That’s now 75 countries kissing my ass.”

Why exactly were the American population so repelled by the liberal alternative that they voted for such a person?

I examine this question in my recently published novel No Free Speech for Hate, in which a new priestly caste has established itself, cooking up ever stranger doctrines of a new political religion in their isolated ivory towers of academia and government, imposing a new creed on society expressed in a language, like Latin in medieval times, incomprehensible to ordinary folk, using concepts such as intersectionality, a multitude of categories of gender and sexual orientation, diversity, equity and inclusion, cancelling and de-platforming any heretic with the temerity to challenge any aspect of the new orthodoxy.

In the meantime those who fall outside of the privileged metropolitan elite, cast out from their formerly respected roles mining coal, metal working, construction and engineering, befuddled by new technological and sociological jargon, finding themselves unsuited for the opportunities arising in this new world and treated with contempt by the cognoscenti, are seduced by populist chancers promising a return to an earlier era of greatness.