Why don’t Brits like Trump

PageTurner: I lived in America for a year when I was young but I find it impossible to understand the adulation Trump receives from some of his fellow countrymen and women! Many of us aren’t impressed with our own government either. The USA promotes itself as the land of the free so one would hope that includes free speech.

pageturner feel free to say anything you like about our government leaders - we won’t be offended.

Frighteningly it has opened my eyes to how Hitler managed to get such a following as to ruin the world for a period in history I could never understand how he had enough popularity to turn people’s heads to murder on such a huge scale but seeing how Trump can turn the heads of some believable intelligent people like yourself pageturner I can now understand
Unfortunately pageturner no one at all has had to be ‘up to their dirty tricks’ as you put it Trump has done it all for himself with his big mouth and brain that doesn’t connect to put any reasonable words together he’s an out and out racist sexist money mad cheat who would stop at nothing and he can’t put a sentence together apart from the cry of ‘Fake news
and the love for his Twitter finger ’

I agree with you over our chaps you can say what you like about them before you go

Yes good analogy to Hitler’s Germany Bluebelle. Trump really is that bad. Although could I point out that most of the German people didn’t know what was going on in the camps (my mother grew up in Hitler’s Germany).

I’m not a fan of Trump but I must admit I like him. I think it’s his ‘couldn’t care less what I say’ attitude - I’ll miss him.
I don’t follow American politics at all but has he been that bad a president?
He still pulled in millions of votes this time round.
Pretty sure his son will take over in a few years anyway, so doubt it’s the last we’ve heard of Trump.

I expect you have gone now PageTurner but in the UK we regularly say negative things about our Prime Minister and others in office. We don't equate the prestige of the position with the person who holds that office. As far as we are concerned they all have faults - and some many, many faults (just think back to any PM here!), and we are often full of anger and exasperated with them.

Thatcher, Johnson, Blair, May et al have been on the receiving end of vitriol from people both left and right. Corbyn, who wasn't even PM, has also endured hateful comments.

America is clearly a great country but is is very divided. Like the UK there is a massive gap between the most wealthy and the poorest. These divisions make it hard to see only the good in a place - and I say this with sadness as I lived in America when I had young children so feel a great fondness towards you. One of my children was born there, met a young American here in the UK and has now made it his home. I am invested in America through him.
Two of my very dearest friends here in the UK happen to be American - and I still have two very close friends from my time over there who I love - so it not as though we hate everything about America.

If you are still here, please understand, the comments you read on Gransnet would likely as not be the same if he was our PM. It has nothing to do with his office or his country, except that when you hold high office, we expect more of people and are often (some say usually), dissapointed.

Did you follow the Brexit debate here? Did you read the comments about our leaders in that debate? Did you see the crowds marching against the government about the Iraq war? Many of us still feel deceived and angry with Blair about that.

Please PageTurner don't think the feelings about Trump extend to the whole of America. From this side of the pond, he is not percieved to be representative of the ordinary people, even if he is currently your figurehead.
Finally, the different attitudes can be seen in the way our ex-PMs revert to their names after they leave office. America goes on calling their ex-presidents "President" I think this is a conflation of the person and the office. Rest assured, many of us love and trust and have lives bound up with America. I don't think you should take negative reactions to this one person, Trump, to heart.

Is it a sort of cult brainwashing do you think that turns decent ordinary people into the moronic crowds we see adulating political figures of American political parties?

I have never seen this in the U.K.

Germany yes.

He is, in my opinion, a vulgar, vacuous, racist, sexist, bully with below average intelligence and a severe narcissistic personality disorder.

The OP says "I could say a few things about your government leaders, but I was brought up a bit differently than you were." I did believe that Americans were also brought up to see the characters of their all-too-human leaders with clear eyes, not ones misted with awe at the high office they occupy. The ones who left Britain in the Mayflower and her sister ships could certainly see the inequalities in the way they treated those with a variation in their religious faith.

I don't know why so many have changed to tolerating the intolerant and brutal attitude the most recent president has shown toward foreigners, women, those of other faiths, and the needy of all kinds.

A good post NotSpaghetti. I agree.

It's also good to read *BlueBelle's post as increasingly I've found the Trump rallies to be a scary, raucous echo of pre-WW2 rallies.

I shall now off to copy GillT57's post.

Don’t get me wrong... Trump is every vulgar, negative adjective known to man, and a few more added on! He’s like a car with all the emergency lights flashing telling us there is something seriously wrong, and it needs to be taken in, and most likely scrapped. BUT.....the much more worrying thing is the millions of people who have voted for him. Nearly 70 million according to the news last night. That figure is probably higher now. We had the chance to emigrate there about 35 years ago, but it just didn’t feel quite right. Sooooo relieved we didn’t go. Are they a country we want to be ‘ friends’ with? I’m not so sure.

Ps, great post Gill. It should be posted across the world!

It's visceral. He does something with his neck/shoulders, his hand gestures. Screams liar, bully (real vicious sadistic bully). - That's all apart from his overt taking over of a political party to achieve power - they are SO lucky to have the Democrats to save them from him. Months longer and I fear he would have done some constitutional changes to prevent him ever having to refer to 'the people' again.

I’ve just read PageTurner’s post! I rest my case?.

a little light relief

Esspee

Is it a sort of cult brainwashing do you think that turns decent ordinary people into the moronic crowds we see adulating political figures of American political parties?

I have never seen this in the U.K.

Germany yes.

A friend wrote this yesterday.

I can't help feeling that the US is like an abused partner of Trump. He has gaslighted them to extreme degrees, tells them he has their best interests at heart, nobody loves them more than he does, only he cares about them, nobody else loves them, and no-one loves them like he does. All the while, punching them where the bruises don't show.

DH used to visit the states a lot - and go to some of the backwoods areas, tourists and most business men do not visit and he found many Americans are insular and ignorant in a way we do not have. There is a gullibility and profound lack of knowledge of anywhere outside the USA. Very few had been outside their home state.

Some time in the 1980s there were riots in Egypt and college educated senior managers in his company would not travel across the Atlantic to Europe because the riots in Egypt made it too dangerous. This was before terrorism as we see it now. They had absolutely no idea where Egypt was.

His behaviour is " just not cricket ".

I remember being told, some time ago, that only 6% of Americans had a passport. That percentage may now be slightly bigger but it is clear that the majority of Americans know very little about the wider world.

I agree with M0nica’s DH. I lived in a very rural agricultural Midwest state for a few years. Many country folk had never left the state, even to go to Chicago. The local airport was called International, but only because there were some flights to Canada and Mexico. Fortunately I lived in a very cosmopolitan university city and I enjoyed my time there.

Shrub, I think we were neighbours.

....most of the German people didn’t know what was going on in the camps.....

Where did they think the Jewish people disappeared to? How did they not know after Crystal Night that Jewish people were being persecuted? What did they think when huge bonfires of books were burnt in public places? Why were they happy to accept Jewish businesses being signed over to Aryans, in other words to themselves? Why did they benefit from vacated Jewish properties when Jewish families were deported? What do they think happened to the thousands of Jewish men who were rounded up during Crystal Night? How could the people who lived near the camps such as Bergen Belsen or Dachau (I’ve visited Dachau and I know how near to the town it was) even pretend they didn’t know when they regularly saw work groups walking to work and back in an emancipated state? How could the owners of businesses that benefitted from slave labour even pretend they didn’t know?

Of course the German people knew. They covered their tracks after the war by saying they knew nothing. But they clearly knew and closed their eyes to it.

The minority of Americans who still support Trump must learn lessons from history.

Pageturner I am sorry you feel as you do, but I think the word hate is very much over used to day. Even the slightest dislike of someone, is immediately labelled as a hate crime, when all someone has done is say that someone is a bore or badly educated.

What you need to know is that while Trump has got an enormous support within the USA and has constantly said he will make the US great again. Outside your country, in the rest of the world, he has made the USA a laughing stock and in the Foreign Ministries of most of the countries in the world Foreign ministers and governments have given a sigh of relief when the Pennsylvania result was announced and your country immediately regained its previous stature in world affairs. The only countries sorry to see him go were the bad boys of the world,: North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Israel. the prospects of peace in the Middle East have improved markedly.

You only have to read back up the thread to see how poorly those outside the US have regarded him. Your country deserves so much better.

I do hope that people like pageturner will now reflect on the mistakes they have made in supporting Trump.

He is reviled all over the world as having destroyed the reputation of the USA as a decent, law abiding democratic country.

I do hope that President Biden can repair the damage but it may take many years.