So it's official, Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for the 2016 Presidential election. I'll be writing plenty more about Trump in the weeks to come, but essentially my view is that it's time for people to stop dismissing him as an unelectable joke. Clearly, the ground rules on what is and isn't 'electable' are more malleable than ever at present, and he has to be taken seriously, regardless of the fact that he looks like an overgrown teabag with a yellow duster wig.
I would find it easier to rationalise Trump's popularity were he a ranting oaf like the US 'shock jock' Alex Jones, or a charismatic and occasionally witty racist like Nigel Farage; but the fact is that Trump is staggeringly inarticulate, so much so that he almost makes George W. Bush seem as eloquent a rhetorician as Obama.
Trump may have hijacked the Republican party, much to their evident dismay, but he is a monster entirely of their own making. When you poison the well of political discourse with such committed toxicity, with the Tea Party faction et al, and grind Congress to a halt on numerous occasions, don't be surprised when an odious carp like Trump breaches the surface of the noxious water and grows fatter from the poisonous minnows in his way.
Watching his convention speech, there was an interesting parallel to be made with current world politics elsewhere.
A centrepiece of Trump's threadbare policy tapestry was his pledge that "the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end." How might he go about achieving such a feat?
Perhaps he has been modelling his policy strategy on that of President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines who was elected in May on a swollen wave of anti-crime rhetoric. In his short time in office so far, Duterte has advocated the murder of drug dealers and addicts, and has galvanised his police force to kill some 30 suspected 'drug lords'.
Such incendiary attitudes to law enforcement may begin to spread closer to home. New Prime Minister Theresa May - she of the 'Immigrants Go Home' van - is nothing if not a tad authoritarian. As Home Secretary she has pushed hard for the Counter-Extremism and Safeguarding Bill - the 'snooper's charter' - which essentially empowers everyone to keep a suspicious eye on everyone else in an effort at rooting out early signs of extremism.
She has also passed the Psychoactive Substances Act; a ridiculously regressive piece of legislation which bans as an 'illegal drug' substances on a definition so broad as to potentially include incense sticks and wax candles.
This is not only wrong-headed, anti-scientific law but also grossly unfair of our Dear Leaders. After all, in a world that can present Donald Trump as a possible 'leader of the free world', we'll need all the psychoactive substances we can gobble down just to stay sane.
More on The Donald soon...
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