The Handshake Presidency
A press (un)worthy
The Trump administration, as it almost typically became known ( a slightly euphemistic insinuation, one suspects), will be remembered for two reasons. The palpable wildness of Herr Drumpf, and, disappointingly, the pathetic craziness of the press. At no point did the journalistic profession demand better of itself; that in criticising an obvious fraud and improper actor, they too descended to the ranks of mendacity and improper action. Acuity and thoroughness were - dare I say the word - foreign concepts (What do you mean by that, sir?). The common journalist found themselves doing as much reading as the offal in the Oval Office and were far greater subjects to whim, pseudo-intellectualism and the president himself’s mind.
Very few points in American history have called for the bare minimum in diligence with the pen, fortitude of the mind and vulpine cunning. We were entreated to none of such; it was a mediocracy (the fusion of media and mediocre, this time, was inexorable). How dare I say so? Handshakes. Greetings, grips and gratitudes became bread and butter interest pieces featuring no incision, no inspection and no interest. Intrinsic to these manus ‘commentaries’, with almost Freudian obsession, were discussions of duration, force of grasp, masculinity, etc. so on, so forth, farewell, yada yada yada.
True enough, there were notable clasped exchanges; the forceful Trump-Trudeau stare-down, the Merkel refusal, the awkward Japanese translation, the lingering back and forth with Macron (Macron called it the ‘moment of truth’, as if to tease us with the prospect of veracity hiding somewhere between those two). Okay, fine. They were bizarre, peculiar, strange even. Allow me to ask: Why did he meet with Macron? Better yet, why did he meet with Angela Merkel? Why to all of these meetings? To whom was it reported? Who remembers? No one. It wasn’t reported because it is ostensibly less important who the president was meeting and why he was meeting them than how he ordained their presence for tedious photographs.
Perhaps the most important photograph of the Trump presidency. He meets with a fat despot responsible for the misery and subjugation of millions unfortunate enough to be born in to the most perfect imposition of 1984 ever conceived. He shakes hands with an obvious oppressor, a visible villain and capricious goat-hoofed devil who daily inebriates himself on the suffering of all his peoples and maintains a serpentine grip on the windpipe of all North Koreans. I challenge you, reader, to find one article outraged that a U.S. president may shake hands with an inherent Stalinist. The photograph, in fact, is reminiscent of that Yalta conference photo. Having defeated one livid Lucifer, Churchill and Roosevelt say cheese with another, far more successful Beelzebub.
Well, we missed that opportunity again. How often do we rue the missed ambition of Patton, claiming the defeat of the wrong enemy, and how soon we descended into seventy years of nuclear noughts and crosses. It is hideous to the intelligent mind to see these two Western leaders, hailed by conservatives and sentimentalists of different stripes as icons of sovereignty and freedom, quipping with one of the worst sadists the world has ever known. Yet, are we so illiterate now, still, as not to point out a dictator shaking hands with the president when we see one?
There is a false dichotomy, often spouted by boring people, as to whether we need better politicians or a better electorate. These options are not mutually exclusive; we require both and, at the base level, a responsible journalistic press able to see outside their own lust for easy words and colourful pictures.