This morning dawned as rather a gloomy day but the weather forecasters tell us to expect two or three days of really fine weather in a mini heatwave before a succession of Atlantic storms are destined to sweep across the country. After we had got Meg up and breakfasted, we set forth for our Saturday morning trip down to Waitrose to see our friends and indeed saw two of them but the third was absent so we hope that she is in good health. After we had made our up the hill and the carers had attended to Meg, I set about preparing our Saturday lunch. I had bought a large chicken, bacon and leek pie which I divided into half as is my wont, cooking one half of it today and freezing the rest for later. Immediately after lunch, I consulted the TV schedules to see if any good films were being shown. Fortunately, there was one which I had seen in a documentary before but not seen the actual film. This was a wartime story entitled ‘The Man who Never Was’ and was the story of one of the greatest acts of political deception instituted by the British during WW2. Basically, the plot was to deceive the Nazis that an intended invasion was to take place through Sicily by taking a corpse, given it an authentic British identity (including papers signed personally by Churchill himself) and then letting the body, released from a submarine, to be carried by the tides to be deposited on the beech of Huelva, near Cadiz in Southern Spain. Here it was almost certain that the body and the briefcase containing papers attached to it would be handed over to the Germans who would then assiduously check out all of the details to attempt to ensure that they were not being duped. The British intelligence officers had done such a thorough job of filling in the ‘back story’ that upon a German agent checking what was possible in London, the identity of the body (actually a European vagrant) was confirmed and so the deception was successful. To my mind, the documentary when it was broadcast several years ago was even more exciting than the film but it is always interesting to see ‘true’ stories as it were.
Returning to the American political scene after a day or so, I note that one opinion poll (which might be a very small and aberrant one) gives Kamala Harris a lead of 8% over Donald Trump. Whether this poll is an accurate indication of public opinion or not, it certainly shows the direction of travel because the Harris campaign has certainly been energised of late whereas the Trump campaign seems to be going nowhere. One of the attack weapons that the Democrats are deploying is that of sarcasm and humour and I feel that the American political system is probably more used to frontal attacks rather than wit or sarcasm. Donald Trump’s running mate, J D Vance has been the object of particular mockery, one of the attack lines being that he uses eyeliner as though he was desperate to attract attention at a disco. But the more serious charge is that it is claimed that he once had sex ‘with a couch’ Now this letter claim is interesting because upon fact checking it is probably untrue. But the political damage arises from the fact that many of the American public do believe that it could be true and herein lies the force of the attack. The Democrats are persisting with their attack line or should I say, attack word, the Republicans are ‘weird’ and this appears to be having an impact. Probably one of the greatest attack lines of all time relates to the incredibly tight race between Nixon and Kennedy in the 1960’s. Richard Nixon, who of course eventually made it to the presidency was defeated by Kennedy. Nixon was one of those men who grow a beard exceptionally strongly and really needed to shave twice a day. But in one famous television broadcast, Nixon had forgotten to have a second shave for that day and when he appeared on TV had a slightly dark and sinister appearance to his jowls. The attack line from the Kennedy camp was ‘Would you buy a used car from this man?’ and reinforced the view that Richard Nixon was not to be trusted and thus deserved another soubriquet which as ‘tricky Dicky’ In the British political system, wit and humour is much appreciated in the House of Commons on both sides of the political divide. The master of this was undoubtedly Denis Healey, the veteran Labour politician who once described Margaret Thatcher as ‘Atilla the Hen’. Another political opponent was Geoffrey Howe who had a rather dreamy and languorous appearance although he was actually quite a smart cookie, as the Americans say. Denis Healey said of Geoffrey Howe that to be attacked politically by him was like ‘being savaged by a dead sheep’ One knows that these attacks are hitting their target when opposition laughs as much at the joke as one’s own side. One of the best opponents of the art of the amusing ‘bon mot’ was the Labour MP Tony Banks who made his reputation as a wit on the Labour back benches. Eventually, he was given a junior position in the Government as a junior minister for sport and his observation upon this was ‘I am completely gobsmacked. It is a bit like going to heaven without having to die first.’ In fact, it does not take much searching on the web using the search term of ‘the wit and wisdom of Tony Banks’ to find a whole slew of the amusing put downs of which Tony Banks was the master.
There is a hint in some of the American media that Trump might be exhibiting some of the first signs of dementia, or at least a degree of paranoid behaviour. Such is the opinion of an American psychiatrist but I am pretty sure that American psychiatrists are barred by the code of ethics of their own professional association not to diagnose at a distance but this principle seems to be more honoured in the breach than the observance. But even on a straight political level, Trump does not seem to be conducting a ‘normal’ political campaign. Three months from election day itself, one would imagine that there would be lots of visits to the crucial ‘swing’ states but Trump seems to be holed up in his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida rather than campaigning in the normal way. Trump has recently claimed that he has drawn a bigger crowd than the celebrated Martin Luther King in his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech but this may be yet another indication of Trump’s delusional grasp of reality.
© Mike Hart [2024]