The True Doctrine

Conservatism's new defender, Isabel Ayuso

As 2020 limps to its end I see swarms of bats surrounding the frog symposiums that are advising the worm conventicle in the great corner of mud. The end may be near,  but end well it won't. This week's Camino a Ítaca looks at the fall of the Great Cheeto and steaming pile of excrement he leaves behind. Click over to read the originally published Spanish version or read the English version below. Tambien se puede ver el original en castellano abajo en PDF.

The heathens are at the gates. Their sordid encampments line the defensive walls of long-standing institutions, from the gluttonous streets of Washington to el Pazo de Meiras, el Palacio de la Zarzuela and the banks of the rio Cinca. Their long-planned assault will leave no one, born or unborn, unscathed and no establishment untouched. Segregatedmadrasas run by smarmy Opus Dei sycophants are frantically looking for new sponsors and are beefing up security. Even in the Sierra de Madrid, surveillance has had to be stepped up at the Prince of Vallecas’ retreat in Galapagar.

Gente de bien in their desperation have been seen fleeing across the Pyrenees en route to Switzerland with their passports and bank books held firmly between clenched teeth. Those without the means or Swiss bank accounts are being rallied to take up arms in their stead to do battle in each new sortie of the culture wars.

With the impending fall of Christendom's greatest defender of conservative ideals, the twice divorced reality TV star with a penchant for pornstars, a great howl of grief has been heard across the conservative world.

In between shock, disbelief and outright delusion, rallies are being held in Atlanta, Warsaw, Budapest, Downing Street and la calle Bambú in support of the man who once proudly boasted that if Ivanka wasn’t his own daughter that he’d perhaps be dating her. Like it or not, conservatism's greatest champion since Henry Kissinger and his network of friendly dictatorships on the ‘right’ side of the political spectrum is going to have to tell the movers how to pack up his vast collection of remote controls and take-out menus.

Things look grim and losing the election might turn out to be the least of Trump’s worries. Calls have been put in to the self-exiled former King of Spain about the best 'clubs' with dinner service in Abu Dhabi and tentative hotel reservations have been made in Riyadh in case the FBI come knocking. This season of the most crass Reality Show the world has ever known is coming to an end.

The smoking detritus of the global political landscape left in his oily wake reminds us where he’s taken us. A legacy that leaves a world in which we see ideas that once would have been called outright lunacy, now debated and even considered, rebranded as alternative facts.

The art of lying is nothing new to politics and politicians. Nevertheless, Trump’s incorporation of the dictatorial, thuggish technique of doubling down on lies when confronted and then threatening his accusers with veiled violence is something new to press conferences outside of Pyongyang. And it works.

It’s a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed around the world. Admirers copy his tweets into Google translate and paste them into local contexts, railing against those who then challenge them. Chats from high-ranking ex-military officials openly discussing killing off 26 millionreds, children included, barely register a blip in the media in the post-Trump world. Opponents are now enemies and are to be dealt with accordingly.

Meanwhile, strategists working for the opposite side of the spectrum plot to create Orwellian Ministries of Truth in supposed attempts to stop the ‘fake news’ of their opponents.

Paraphrasing Ambrose Beirce at the beginning of the last century, there are those who are enamoured of existing evils and those who wish to replace those evils with others. The genie is out of the bottle and with the brutal bleeding hangover no one remembers where the instructions are to put it back in.