America, WTF?

I love America. More than most British people, I love America. Age eleven, I went to visit Florida and fell in love with how friendly the people there were, how forthcoming and welcoming, as opposed to the stiff-upper-lipped, class-divided, wry, sarcastic society we live in back here. I got a lot of crap from my schoolmates for my, admittedly OTT, love of America, with the common refrain being "leave then!" (those classmates are probably voting Reform right now). I would've done, happily.

Don't get me wrong, I love the UK. All the same, I'm not a nativist and not a nationalist. I love the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. But I also love The Doors and the Velvet Underground. My love of the US is not confined to the West or East coasts (as of writing, I've never visited the East Coast) but also the South, the Midwest, and the myriad small-towns which have more wisdom than all the big universities put together.

That's why it pains me to look across the pond and see what is happening now, with your big orange president and his non-existent brain and cabinet of white supremacists. That soon we might be fighting each other, if you attack NATO, really causes me pain; it makes me feel sick. It's a cliche to say that some of best friends are American. But it's fucking true. I'd go as far to say I didn't realise there were people like me (who loved old films and old music) until I met my American friends across the pond in Chicago first, and then Los Angeles, and then Chicago again.

But I can't be on the side of Trump. And before any MAGAites (MAGGots?) accuse me of being a loony leftie liberal, the Americans I admire include Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Mitt Romney, and George W. Bush. I can appreciate aspects of socialism but I'm not a fan of identity politics. I despise university slam-poetry politics. And I didn't support Jeremy Corbyn.

And hence, looking at the US, I just feel so sick seeing this horrid cancerous orange man, who never really believed in the American Dream, or who represented a perversion of it, be the one to destroy the special relationship between our two countries. This man who, when faced with the graves of veterans, said, "what was in it for them?" He's not even a patriot, for god's sake. He has never believed in anything except his own ego. This man -- who has used ICE to murder his own citizens, who has abducted thousands if not millions of immigrants -- who is just an all-around monster for whom Hell is not hot enough.

There have been rumours of Trump's ill health for ages now. For instance, his scarred hand. His verbal wobbles. I hope whatever illness he has hurries up and kills him before good American soldiers start going home in body-bags. For my issue is not with the brave soldiers soon to be given illegal orders but their bone-spurs, brain-dead commander in chief. Twat.