M. Beisenherz: Sorry, I’m here privately
Trumpzilla on the way to Washington
Donald Trump wants to become US President again in 2024
© David Becker/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/Getty Images via AFP
An orange monster stalks toward Washington. Our columnist fears that neither missiles nor courts will be able to stop it.
By Micky Beisenherz
Throwing frying pans, old records or branches, if necessary hitting the head with a shovel – nothing helped when the heroes in the classic film “Shaun of the Dead” tried to kill a zombie in the garden. The undead simply kept getting up to do his mischief.
Why am I telling you this since I’m actually talking about… Donald Trump wanted to write? Well then.
In 2024, four billion people will be called to vote, and even if one could assume it based on the media attention: that is not the cumulative population of Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia. People are also encouraged to go to the polls in the European elections as well as in Taiwan and Russia. In Putin’s empire, some people even have the chance to go to the polls during the election campaign. Well, okay: the Russian presidential elections promise as much excitement as the last ten years of the Bundesliga.
One almost wants to be grateful that the outcome of the US elections still offers real excitement. Even though the field of candidates leaves you shaking your head like a bobblehead. It’s astonishing that the leading country, the driver of innovation in the free West, has nothing fresher to offer than two gentlemen on the other side of the “Tena Men” border. When incontinence meets rebelliousness.
An 81-year-old and a 77-year-old are arguing in a nasty way that you usually only experience when it comes to winning the remote control for the ZDF television garden. Joe Biden can’t be blamed for much other than his age. He pursues extremely serious politics and appears to be stable and a strong leader when it comes to foreign policy issues. But what does it help if, at a certain point, the year of birth outweighs all other facts and quite a few people look at the election campaign as if they were waiting for the “Naked Cannon 44 ¼”.
The Democrats are clearly stumbling into disaster
The 2020 plan to send a political spare wheel into the race with Kamala Harris can be considered a failure given her non-performance. So the Democrats are clearly stumbling into a long-ignored disaster. Today, as then, it is loud, orange and more likely to be killed by cheeseburgers than by ballot papers. The ex-president seems so popular that he doesn’t even take part in the TV duels between Republican candidates, preferring instead to appear solo elsewhere. Who goes to Take That in the Stadthalle when Robbie Williams is in the stadium next door?
Trumpzilla is once again trudging ominously toward a political village called Washington. Just like his fans, who didn’t even let snowstorms stop them from voting for their candidate in the Iowa caucuses. Not every means of stopping him seems clever. The fact that the courts in Maine and Colorado are removing Trump from the primaries because of his role in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 is reminiscent of the AfD ban previously sought by the SPD. Here and there, to the supporters and sympathizers of the extremists, it will seem like unfair “moving the goalposts”: If you can’t win the game, you make your goal smaller. Maybe you can ban a party or a candidate, but unfortunately you don’t have a feeling.
As long as this means that the rejection of what exists is greater than the doubt about the sincerity of the challengers, it will all be nothing. Neither Trump nor Höcke’s fascist polonaise can be defeated in this way. The same old speeches about how anti-democratic and anti-constitutional the extremist parties are seem like the flying vinyl in the garden of “Shaun of the Dead”: old records that no longer blow anyone away.