A royal screwing
There’s something about a certain kind of evil person that attracts a certain kind of other person. I’m thinking of the jerks I’ve worked with in corporate offices who inevitably attract larger crowds to their send-off lunches than you’d expect. Which, I suppose, tracks back to middle school bullies who often had retinues and other kids who went out of their way to be nice to them. It’s an attraction I have never understood but have long known about.
I’m guessing here, but does it have to do with the proposition that the surest way to avoid the casual sadism of a bully is to be on his or her team? That may be part of it, but I don’t think that’s all of it. Bullies are dangerously arbitrary and notoriously disloyal. Kissing their asses is no guarantee that they won’t turn on you. To my way of thinking, bullies are like allergic reactions, the best cure is to avoid the allergen.
Which brings me to Trump and my point. Why in the name of hell did Great Britain’s King Charles III offer Trump an unprecedented second state visit, complete with dinner? In the history of this ordinarily sensible isle, no American president has ever been given two state occasions, and many haven’t received even one.
Not only did the King give the world’s most stupid, tawdry, offensive criminal this unearned honour, he had it delivered “Manu Regia,” a hand-carried formal invitation signed by the King himself. That’s just one more memento for Trump’s ego-slathering collection, like his jackbooted, fascistic parade, his covers on Time Magazine, or his long hoped-for Nobel Peace Prize.
Do I have to remind His Majesty that this is the man who, on various occasions, threatened the sovereignty of Canada, one of Britain’s greatest members of the Commonwealth? The King has always been a personal champion of human civil rights, racial and religious equality and the environment. Trump’s record of bigotry, his uncountable violations of the civil rights of immigrants and citizens alike, his official stance of global warming denialism makes him one of the most egregious heads of state in the world. Why, your majesty, why?
There was a time when the King and the prime minister refused to have anything to do with dictators. Their names, respectively, were George VI and Winston Churchill, and the dictator was Adolf Hitler. The Queen once ejected a member of her own Commonwealth for playing host to a fascist. The member was Zimbabwe and the dictator was Robert Mugabe.
What’s more, Trump is wildly unpopular here, and a state dinner isn’t going to help the King’s already delicate approval rating, nor will it help Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s declining polling numbers inside his own Labour Party.
No doubt because Trump has a long-standing, racist dislike of Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, and because London’s lively population would turn out to protest and fly the “Trump-baby” balloon, the state visit will be held at Windsor Castle in Berkshire. Whatever the reason, it gives undue honour to a bastard, and amounts to nothing more than a royal screwing of the beliefs and values of most of the people here.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.