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Any hope that things were going to be OK is immediately squashed by Trump’s reaction to the reporting of the numbers of people attending his inauguration. Any sensible person would think that this issue was not important or at least simply argue that the reason his supporters can’t get to Washington is because they live elsewhere and don’t have the money to travel. But to deny the evidence that is freely available to see with your own eyes is chilling. And quite effective. To just lie in the face of a fact does have the natural inclination to make you think, well, maybe there’s something to it. No one would make such a stupid lie. Maybe the photos were taken before the actual event as people were still arriving.
Then again why would the world’s press conspire to lie about this particular issue? Could they even predict it would matter? And wouldn’t there be one person in the world who had a photo of the real crowds?
So the lie in the face of logic, reason and evidence is actually terrifying. At best Trump can’t bear to be beaten at anything and will fly off the handle if he is, at worst this is the beginning of an attempt to discredit the free press and create an authoritarian regime based on the cult of personality.
I was cheered somewhat by the success of the women’s marches around the world today. Some questioned what they achieved or how the world would react to men’s marches (but it wasn’t a march of women, it was a march for women and really just a march to show that if you were bamboozled and afraid about what was going on then you weren’t alone). Piers Morgan led the charge of the idiots. And when idiots are no longer embarrassed to be idiots, that’s when the trouble really starts. We’re already at the stage where the idiots are proud to be idiots. There may be no turning back.
The march, if nothing else, is a demonstration that not everyone is fooled and that not everyone is going to sit back and let this wash over them. The natural inclination is to keep your head down and wait for the time to pass (and it’s one that I quite strongly feel) but if we do that and don’t challenge this nonsense at every turn then it’s going to be getting out of the pit that’s created in the mean time.
Laughter is going to be a powerful force in getting us through this I think and tonight there was plenty at Sex Appeal 6, a gig
in support of Brook. It was a very diverse bill in terms of sex, ethnicity and sexuality, with me representing white heterosexual men with incredibly vanilla sexual tastes and a high level of awkwardness about being gifted a bag of sex toys (though I keep going back and doing this gig, meaning I have the world’s largest collection of never used butt plugs - one day I am going to stick all of them up my arse in one go, but not today). Great cause and a long and filthy night of comedy. Best of all there were 1.5 million people in the audience. And the highest previous attendance was about 450. So you know, we are the best.
