To see what Trump will do to America, look to his disastrous walled Scottish golf course

boing
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My favourite Trump-appropriate stream of Shakespearean invective won’t fit in a tweet, but it does include the word “whoreson”:

A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch

I think “base, proud, shallow” is particularly on-point. If you’d like something a bit shorter (also including “whoreson”), just below that in the text comes “Thou whoreson zed! thou unnecessary letter!”

Edit: for that matter, “whoreson cullionly barber-monger” is not a bad fit for Herr Hairpiece either…

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42

Talk about a basket of deplorables! Where is Meteor Strike 2016?

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43

Ouch.

.

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45

The Scots have their own line in dysfunctional politicians, from the guy who brought about the Glencoe massacre to George Galloway, but it’s the style of Farage that’s so offensive. He’s a typical Sarf Lahndn/Essex wideboy, of the sort that, if you bought a dodgy stopped watch from him it wouldn’t even be right twice a day. (By contrast Alan Sugar is almost stereotypical East London Jewish, which means that IRL I’d trust Sugar a hell of a lot further than Farage because Sugar would drive a hard bargain, but Farage would simply shaft you and run for the exit.)
Trump wouldn’t understand this any more than a typical English person would understand the different cultures of the New York boroughs and ethnic groups.

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46

As in cesspool…that kinda cess…I can imagine that

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http://imgur.com/XkLZe1n

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48

In fact Ezra Pound used it, and he was an American. I’m pretty sure he could pronounce it too; it’s not difficult.
Ezra, by the way, was a conspiracy theory protofascist who fell for the charm of that Italian Trumpalike Mussolini. He was also one of the great poets of the 20th century. Go figure.

(Sestina: Altaforte; “You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let’s to music!”)

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We have the same resistance to offshore windmills in the U.S. and I don’t get it. They have an elegant design, they are quiet, and there is something tranquil about the slow spinning of the blades. Considering all problems caused by carbon extraction in this country, wind power should be welcomed.

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Yea, he’s one of those poets well-educated people think they should know all about, but nobody has ever deciphered those stupid Cantos, have they?

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The likely problem with windmills is that they don’t make money for the right kind of people

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Actually I’ve read quite a lot of them - parts are good and someone needs to make a redacted version with commentary, if they haven’t already. What Pound needed was an editor with a big pair of shears, and someone to tell him that a lot of his beliefs were bonkers. But there are parts - like the bit about Helen of Troy, elenaus kai eleptolis (destroyer of ships and cities) that are the authentic goosebump stuff. Pound at his best is better than Lowell or Berryman; Pound at his worst is Trump.
And therefore someone needs to do the same job on Trump’s Twitter account before he becomes the most embarrassing President in US history.

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53

Or, as many Scots would better and more succinctly put it, “a c*nt”.

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54

As one Scottish woman put it:

trumpcunt800x546.jpg800×546 54.7 KB

My pedantry gets the better of me, though: The write up gets a lot of the Balmedie story right, but the interaction between Aberdeenshire Council and the Scottish Government’s fudged. To be fair, a lot of the Scottish media fudges that as well, because few reporters (and few people) are interested in the workings of local democracy — and that’s a problem that gets put to one side when this story is told this way

The article positions the golf course being pushed through by the then First Minister, Alex Salmond, who did intervene, but his intervention didn’t serve to overrule the decision of the council as the NY Times reports. To try and work through it briefly:

• Aberdeenshire Council was in favour of the development, voting as a whole to support the application as it progressed.
• Aberdeenshire council’s planning department was in favour too: or at least, found nothing that could be objected to on the basis of the council’s planning guidelines and then said they recommended it.
• When these more detailed plans were presented to the planning subcommittee, the committee was divided until the chair (Martin Ford, quoted in the Times) stepped in and voted against. Ford then wrote the report, which, iirc, focussed on the Site of Special Scientific Interest aspect as a basis for the objection.
• The Scottish Government says it wants to look at the planning application.
• Because he’s chair of a subordinate committee, Aberdeenshire Council can and do strip Ford of his position and overturn his decision, and back the golf course: they cite the jobs, and they can brush aside it being a site of special scientific interest because that status doesn’t give it any protection in planning terms.
• The plans for the golf course are changed to make them better for the environment, but this amounts to little more than a tweak (according to the RSPB)
• The Scottish Government set up an independent inquiry, it recommends that the latest plans for the golf course goes ahead.
• John Swinney, not Alex Salmond, approves the inquiry’s recommendation, and is in support of the council’s decision.

There is a time line, courtesy of the BBC, that links to stories that detail the whole process in greater depth. Including but not limited to: Trump pulling in and out his application so Aberdeenshire Council would be worried he might take his golden economic opportunity elsewhere; the Labour First Minister who preceded Salmond taking Trump on helicopter rides on the public purse; accusations of sleaze; stern alarums; Trump whinging about nearby windfarm plans and trying to get them cancelled; his failing; …

I know this is boring, that it’s absurd to recapitulate my understanding of the whole sorry affair online, but it’s important to me because I think the story about how the people didnae want it, the council didnae want it, the government forced it on us is wrong and dangerous.

I think Trump is what that woman’s sign says he is, but if we simplify what he did in the way that the NYTimes does, we in Scotland evade the responsibility we have for not caring enough to ensure that sites of scientific interest are protected in planning law and guidelines; we evade the responsibility we have for holding our councillors and Taking-Trump-on-Helicopter-Ride-Politicians to account when they vote for a calamity; we evade the responsibility we have to try and ensure that next time it’s different and we strengthen a narrative about how engaging in democracy at the most basic level and trying to reform institutions so they work for us, is pointless.

And things are bad enough as it is, without more of that.

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55

Maybe.

But I also think that it’s because they’re visually jarring. In the specific case of Drumpf’s Scottish golf course, he paid (well, he got others to pay) a shitton of money to create a wholly artificial environment that has the veneer of being natural, without any of the annoyances of actual nature. He then leases access to that artificial version of nature to people who’ve made their own crapton of money despoiling nature in other places.

Those people don’t want to be reminded of the ‘real world.’ They paid good money exactly so they could avoid it. So the wind turbines can fuck right off. Maybe build them next to some slums, or something? You know; where the poors live.

Edit: better yet, since climate change is a Chinese hoax, just forget about wind turbines and build more coal-fired powerplants. Those can go where the poors live too.

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56

It’s a bit late for that concern…that was locked in place on November 8, 2016. Even if he fell over dead right now from shame and embarrassment for being himself he’s still the worst by miles.

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57

they’d exchange the orange dye for embalming fluid and prop him up again as the Corpse-in-Chief, with a computer playing his campaign promises at random. No one who voted for him would notice the difference.

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58

The modern day Teflon Don.

Hopefully like the real thing it will soon catch fire and burn.

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59

He’s still only the President-elect, and hasn’t even passed the Electoral College yet, or been sworn in. If he dropped dead now, I tend to doubt he’d be recorded as a US President, just a “that guy” historical trivia footnote beside President Pence.

At least President Harrison had a great 32 days in office.

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60

I know the electors won’t decide to elect Clinton, but it would be fucking funny if all that were pledged to Trump decided to swap his and Pence’s names around.

I’d love to see Trump doing the VP job.

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That kind of mix-up has previous happened when some electors drank a little too much lunch.

Vote Philbert Desanex!

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