Let\u2019s ignore the fact that the UK monarchy is less popular now than it has probably ever been.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s ignore the fact that it is tainted by the Epstein files.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s ignore the fact that Donald Trump is less popular than he has ever been.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s ignore the fact that he is also tainted by the Epstein files.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s ask instead what this royal visit by King Charles and Queen Camilla (two words that I still cannot associate with each other without difficulty) to visit Trump in the USA is all about.<\/p>\n
There is only one answer. We could change the characters, we could change the time, but the answer is always the same. Such occasions are always about those who think they have power seeking to secure privilege. This is the game that they know. This is the game that they play.<\/p>\n
And the message from this visit is that there is still an active power play going on between the UK and the USA.<\/p>\n
What does that mean?<\/p>\n
It means that we are willing to turn a blind eye to Donald Trump\u2019s abuse of human rights. We are willing to turn a blind eye to his racism, his misogyny and his links to paedophilia, when the last at least would have accounted for him here, as it has for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.<\/p>\n
We are willing, as well, to turn a blind eye to the fact that Trump is now waging an illegal war against Iran, in which war crimes have taken place, and he has threatened much worse.<\/p>\n
We are willing to ignore the fact that the world is in economic crisis because of the vanity of this man and his support for an Israeli government that has undertaken genocide.<\/p>\n
We are willing, as well, to pretend that there is still an equal relationship of power between the US and us and that something that we, on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, would like to call the \u201cspecial relationship\u201d still exists.<\/p>\n
It does not, or if it does, there is something deeply toxic about this relationship.<\/p>\n
It is one based on tolerance of abuse.<\/p>\n
It is one that does not involve judgement.<\/p>\n
It does not consider consequences.<\/p>\n
It is one that does not consider the impact of power on real people, real lives and their loss.<\/p>\n
It is one that plays for the moment, the press release and the image, but which ignores all issues of substance.<\/p>\n
It is, as a result, hollow.<\/p>\n
It is devoid of meaning.<\/p>\n
And, despite all that, it tells us a great deal.<\/p>\n
It tells us that we have desperate and despicable people in power.<\/p>\n
It tells us that we need to be rid of these people, their actions, their beliefs, their motivations and their power systems.<\/p>\n
It tells us that we need real democracy and not the sham two-party systems that dominate supposed political choice in both the UK and the USA, although the appearance of that finally appears to be collapsing in this country, without appropriate reform to electoral systems to permit the new political reality to be reflected in the way in which power will be exercised.<\/p>\n
It tells us that we need to live in an era where defence is about resilience, the preservation of culture, respect for difference, a desire for reconciliation, the avoidance of conflict and the quest for peace.<\/p>\n
It tells us, above all else, that those with power must know what it means to be last if they are to be first. That contempt for, and indifference towards, those whom they perceive to be powerless must come to an end.<\/p>\n
The pursuit of power must cease to be an end in its own right, as neoliberal culture has made it. The governments of the UK and the USA are products of that culture. The abuse that they create, tolerate, perpetrate and pretend exists as a consequence of that ideology.<\/p>\n
And this visit reminds us of one thing. It supposedly celebrates US independence, but that is merely symbolic. What US independence proved was that an idea could topple power.<\/p>\n
That is the most notable issue arising from this week's visit. Those people currently possessed of power as a consequence of the promotion of a cult that worships that false god as a virtue in its own right can be toppled. They can be toppled by the idea that politics should be for people, that we should care, that we should love each other as ourselves, and that there is the possibility of an economics of hope.<\/p>\n
We are a long way from that position as yet, but there is one other thing to note about this state visit. That is that both the host and the guest are ageing men showing signs of their infirmity, and that their grip on power will inevitably slip sometime soon. The hope has to be that those who come after them, and maybe even the systems that choose them, have and are based upon other ideas, motivations and concerns that might deliver something altogether better.<\/p>\n
The dinosaurs might be out this week, but their era has passed.<\/p>\n
Something new is possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"