Amid all the relentlessly knee-jerk anti-Trump stuff being poured out by the BBC, day in and day out (whether entirely justified or not), came a striking exception this week in the shape of John Gray's latest A Point of View - a typically free-thinking take on the whole Trump phenomenon that's well worth a listen.
Sorry, I couldn't get all the way through. The endless sequence of Leftoid perspectives on each issue presented put me off. There was no "whiff of violence" in Trumps primary campaign. Unless, that is, Gray meant a whiff of violence from the anti-Trump protesters, and blames the victim. It's a lie to say that only Trump exploited racial tensions. No mention of Hillary's "Deplorables"?
ReplyDeleteHillary's "vast experience" is a negative because she was a waste of space as a Senator (for everyone except her own promotion, support from Democrats who would owe her favors, and her bank balance), and her time as Secretary of State was a failure. Gray said "experience" because he can't say "accomplishments". It's a poor attitude towards the destructive phenomenon of political lifers, one that is so very BBC.
Then there's the typical Leftoid economic perspectives. NAFTA and other bad trade deals certainly favored corporations and put a lot of people out of work, but labor union power and over-zealous regulators have done at least as much damage. NAFTA didn't ruin Detroit or bankrupt cities in California. A dozen major cities aren't in dire pension deficits that are about to blow up in our faces because of trade deals.
I got the impression of a kinder, gentler version of Nick Robinson's denigrating narrative on the Brexit vote: Trump is the result of "the Left Behind" wanting to kick the establishment, the elite, anyone, really. Gray kept talking about those who had been affected by a lengthy stagnation. No mention of the corruption, Hillary's email scandal, unless he mentioned it after I switched off.
I guess it's an improvement over the usual BBC coverage because Gray didn't just call all Trump supporters racists.