“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:
A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.
Ukraine warned of a massive combined attack planned for putin's birthday.
NATO chose to watch silently.
russia launched the attack Ukraine knew was coming and killed dozens of civilians.
NATO chose to keep watching.
That's the problem. That's why russia escalates.
🆘 Ukraine! Update!The number of killed civilians following this morning's russian deliberate terrorist attack on an apartment building in Pryluky has now increased to 14😢! Among the killed there are 4 CHILDREN😢!The number of injured people surpassed 50, 7 children among em😔!
I can’t stop crying.
It hurts so much that I don’t know where to put all this pain.
I don’t know how to scream louder,
so that the world will help us stop russia.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear station is constantly losing power to the cooling system and russians are flying explosive drones from the roof.
The war in Ukraine affects the entire planet because russian aggression doesn’t stop at the borders here
Blackouts have returned to Kyiv. My district is completely without power, streets are pitch black, and generators are humming. It's going to be a long winter.
President Zelenskyy has said that he will never show his weak moments to anyone, but this must have taken a supreme effort to keep control. 25 people. 19 in one apartment. Five children, 3 of them aged 1. And he STILL has to remind so-called world leaders not to be silent on this
This tiny baby's hand wrapped in a blanket. I am completely broken and devastated.
I don't know what else the 'free world' needs to see. And I don't know how much of that 'freedom' is even left anymore.
My neighbors just came back from outside
A drone fell near the building next to ours
There are a lot of rescuers and emergency crews there
There is a lot of blood on the pavement
They saw a man's body, but it's still unclear how many people were killed
So this happened literally 100m from our building, right on our side of the street
🇺🇦 Zelensky: The debris was cleared all day today after a Russian missile hit Pryluky. The Kh-101 missile. Direct hit on a house. Unfortunately, 19 people died, including five small children.
The total number of deaths after this massive strike on Ukraine is 25 people. One hundred people were injured.
Rescuers in Pryluky recovered the body of another child from the rubble of a residential building destroyed by a Russian missile, raising the death toll to 19.
At least 55 others were injured, including seven children, as search operations continue.
Video: DSNS
I still don't have electricity in my apartment: the relay on the distribution panel, which is inside my apartment, shows a voltage of more than 250V
The relay is programmed to cut off the power supply if the voltage drops below 190V or rises above 250V
I've already filled some extra bottles with water
There are reports of problems with the operation of pumping stations due to power supply issues