FraserWords

I rather hope Donald Trump is elected President of the United States of America. I think the redneck bigot crazies who have their hands wrapped tightly round the throat of the nation need bringing home to them once and for all the utter disgust and contempt the rest of the world feels for their brand of selfishness and despoiling greed, and having a racist homophobic international laughing stock for a President would certainly do that.

They’ve tried decency. But Obama has been hamstrung by the sort of cretin who believes health care for all is an evil. You can’t reason with that level of selfishness and stupidity.

His heartland is scarred by the sort of Texan yokel vox-popped about the environment on Radio 4’s World At One last week. The unconcern, the ignorance, the aggression, the greed, the entitlement, painted a horrifying picture. And as the children die, the rednecks burble on about the freedom of gun ownership. Ted Cruz, who is by the tiniest of tiny margins less crazy than Trump, says they need more guns to get shot of the bad guys. Presumably because having lots of guns has been going so well.

For every Obama, desperately trying to haul his recalcitrant nation out of the past and into a world of tolerance, responsibility and decency, there is a Cruz or a Trump or a straw-chewing Texan in a V24 gaz-guzzling pick-up truck waving his gun in the air or an evangelist Christian insisting primary school children are taught Creationism.

America has a lot wrong with it, and the great benefit of Donald Trump is that he brings it out into the open. With him as President, the world would have no choice but to show its utter revulsion. America might turn in on itself, which would hasten its decline as a world power. Or, increasingly crippled by debt and in hock to China, it may jolt awake, realise it’s the 21^st century and decide it no longer wants to be an international laughing stock. The overwhelming force of decency against his far-right policies would cripple him. It would energise the sort of American who knows the country has to play a part in the world, has to respect others of every race, creed and sexuality. It’s a win-win for the rest of us.

Of course it’s dangerous. In the meantime the finger of a drooling cretin would be on the nuclear button. But we survived the last time it happened, when George W was the cretin in question. I believe there’s enough intelligence behind the scenes in the White House to keep Trump away from the dangerous switches.

So I hope it happens. I think Donald Trump could be the wake-up call for America, but not in the way he ‘thinks’. I think he could be the final death sentence for the sort of redneck bigot for whom he speaks. I think the rest of that great nation could be jolted from complacency and realise what a chance it threw away when it hog-tied Obama with Republican crazies in the Senate. I think the world would finally feel strong enough to act against America’s environmental vandalism, international aggression and institutionalised racism.

You heard it here first. Save America. Vote Trump!

On music…

Something rather incredible happened last week: Brother Fiddle remembered a task with which he had been entrusted, and, furthermore, found the wherewithal with which to complete that task.

The result was that several of us were handed a CD by Brother Utah, also known as Matt Harding, the producer of Brother Fiddle’s excellent new CD The Hallicombe Sessions. Matt is, by the way, American, but not in a Donald Trump way. Matt is American in a big, beardy, open, friendly, funny, lovely way. The best way.

Well. Somehow we need to make Matt’s wonderful music available to more of us. I love his wit, his blues, his guts, his melody, his power, his fun. The album, by The Matt Harding Project, is called ‘Lovely Lady’, but the Coconut Eating Crab knows where it’s available now. There are two used copies on Amazon, but that’s the only direction in which I can point you.

As I type this, the BBC Music Awards are on the television and things, media constructs, like One Direction and Little Mix and Adele, with her millions of pounds and her army behind her, are dominating (according to Twitter; I’m not watching it; I’d sooner dip my dick in a  vat of boiling sherry; I’m listening to the Matt Harding Project, as all music-lovers should).

I’m not sure quite how we got into a position in which marketing, costumes, haircuts, clothes, looks and image matter more than music, but I would sooner live in a world where Matt’s music, and that of Brother Fiddle and Brother Breakfast and all the good and great people out there I love, was wanted enough for it to be available everywhere.

If you can’t reserve one of Matt’s last CDs, then at least get yourself to tonyhazzard.com and order a copy of The Hallicombe Sessions – and then search for George Breakfast on Bandcamp where his digital catalogue is available at a sensational Christmas offer price of under £20. I’d pay that for his song ‘The Bumpy Road to Love’ on its own. Go on, get on with you. Support your artists.

(And for that matter you can bloody well buy my book if you haven’t done so already, on fraserwords.co.uk, seeing as it’s Christmas).

Brother Matt: treat this as your shop window. If you’ve got ’em for sale, get ’em here.

On love…

I want to leave you on a high note this week. You deserve it, because it’s so very late, because what with one thing and another it’s virtually impossible to build up sufficient head of steam these days. What you’ve ended up with is motivated by the usual forces, hate and love – hate of the right, love of music.

And here’s a lovely word about love, which I found while editing my newspaper today, scanning through the Press Association’s feature offerings to the regional press for this week. PA interviewed the lovely actress Miriam Margoyles because she’s fronting a campaign for the Stroke Association, and in the interview Miriam, who’s been with her partner for nearly half a century, said this beautiful thing:

‘I haven’t had children, and I haven’t made a huge amount of money and I’m still fat and plain, but somebody wonderful loves me and nothing else really matters after that, does it?’