Here is why neither Trump, Spudmitch, forearm etc. lack qualities that British people traditionally value and why they perhaps never will acquire them, no matter how hard they try to fake them. Regardless even of how much they win.
On this point, I agree with the viral post making the rounds and don't care about authenticity. *"**“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”* *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."* Class doesn't imply "being rich". As Trump and Musk demonstrate, you can be classless while wealthy and vice versa. If you have some measure of it, you're core is untouched by the multiverse: I can criticize the inefficiency of democracy, the elitism of progressive forces around the world, their corruption through special interests, their failure to genuinely expand freedoms, to confuse their expansion with the overreach of schooling people on their morality and be politically active against those tendencies (instead of merely whining online). But I can - at the same time - point towards a key trait of authoritarianism: the loss of the ability to distinguish what's funny from what is political ideology. E.g. I can joke "against my Team" as Spudmitch would describe it: *“I recycle religiously, feel guilty for owning a gas stove, and spend more time researching oat milk brands than calling my own mother.” or "To stay up on long drives, I listen to Trump speeches." *I'm saying "you have to find this funny" but it could be funny because it’s rooted in truth—it gently mocks genuine tendencies, and the audience laughs not just at others, but with themselves. There's vulnerability in humor, and it invites connection rather than masking an agenda. The joke lands even for conservatives because it’s not loaded with contempt. It doesn't seek to harm or dominate. Because fun doesn't need to "score points for a team". On Sunday, May 4, 2025 at 2:18:04 PM UTC+2 [email protected] wrote: > Because he knew it woulds piss you and yours off JC. > You know the old saying, Fuck em if they can't take a joke. > You get to zing, and he his team gets to zing back. > Like the sign in the bars of the 19th century displayed, > "This ain't no Sunday school." > > On Sunday, May 4, 2025 at 07:56:02 AM EDT, John Clark <[email protected]> > wrote: > *Donald Trump posted this picture on his truth social account without > comment, but then he really didn't need to comment because the picture told > us everything we need to know about where his mindset is. * > > > [image: image.png] > > > *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis > <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* > dr5 > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2RbqE87NtWMFnCxx3CAWDJqgeGeHYHJGS%2BPiMJ2EHJ0A%40mail.gmail.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2RbqE87NtWMFnCxx3CAWDJqgeGeHYHJGS%2BPiMJ2EHJ0A%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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