WELL, that’s that, the Restoration has peacefully taken place, tightly patrolled by 25,000 of the military’s finest. Churchill has see-sawed back out of the Oval Office, and the First Lady’s outfit –not forgetting Michelle’s, Hillary’s and Laura’s – has been admired, copies now a snip on Fifth Avenue. Pastor Joe has delivered his defining sermon – unity, decency, dignity, democracy – welcoming in the new era of worthy American Greatness.
The luvvies were at full pass-the-sick-bag throttle, while CNN’s Van Jones blubbered his devotion: ‘I’m crying, thank Jesus!’ Anti-Trump celebrities virtually renditioned Here Comes the Sun and brightly attired Lady Gaga climaxed the cringe-fest with the National Anthem, channelling what Sid Vicious might have done at the Coronation in Westminster Abbey. Comparisons were drawn to The Hunger Games. Then that nice Mr Clinton suggested that everybody needs to get off their high horse and reach out to their friends and neighbours.
Maybe not everybody. A contingent of Antifa, the self-proclaimed ungovernables, took to the streets of Seattle proclaiming they wanted revenge, not Biden, along with other unprintable epithets, to the accompaniment of smashing Democrat windows, spray-painting graffiti, and burning the Stars and Stripes.
But the Twittersphere was awash with anti-Trump exhortations. It’s good to know that America’s official Emmanuel Goldstein is now installed well out of the way in his Florida theme park, set up for a daily two-minute hate session (or longer if you’re really into it) by the liberated serfs.
The same is getting under way on this side of the Atlantic. It has been announced that the ‘Trump Baby’ blimp has been added to the Protest Collection in the Museum of London, which already displays artifacts from the suffragette movement, climate change rallies and peace activism. Museum director Sharon Ament assured us that the decision to add the balloon was ‘not political’ and that the museum ‘does not have any view of the state of American politics’. In a statement of breathtaking irony, the creators of the blimp, self-described as a collective of anti-fascist art activists, said they hoped its placement of in the museum would serve as a reminder to us all to stand up to ‘the politics of hate’.
Surely this is only the beginning. Can we look forward to a mandatory school visit added to the national curriculum? Apart from the wealth of propagandist value crying out for teenage indoctrination, the commercial aspects present a gift shop bonanza: an array of blow-up mini-blimps, baseball caps adorned with Lady Gaga’s golden dove, lapel badges and project folders with suitable slogans such as ‘F*** Trump’, and best of all, one of those fun erasers you stick on the end of your pencil, designed to get you rubbing the Baby Donald’s nose in it, to correct all your childish misconceptions about the meaning of democracy, free and fair elections, and that pesky concept, the Far Right.
Bring it on!