BITCH THAT TRUMP

Copyright © 2019 Dan Michaels

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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The time has come to choose between real, direct democracy in which citizens vote directly on policy (regardless of number and nature of political parties), and American-style shit-show democracy in which citizens vote for the ‘star’ with whom they most identify (regardless of how moronic this individual may be) to make important decisions for them..

If you hate Trump (and Americans in general), you’ll love this!¹

Contents

Apologies To

Abbreviations used throughout

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The Same But Different

Competing Utopias, Competing Democracies

What’s in a Name?

The Shape of Things to Come

Gender Matters

Iron Ladies

Pussies

Elephant in the Room

Intelligence Matters

Biased Bigly

Back to Black

Emotional Intelligence

Presidents and Psychopaths

Intelligent Systems

Generalisations

American Ideologues

Arrogance and Ignorance

Intelligence and Modesty

Leader of the Intelligent World

The True Face of America

Just Typical

Father Figures

The World’s Policeman

Assassins by Any Other Name

For God’s Sake

Birds of a Feather

CHAPTER 2: THE PARTISAN STATES

The United States – A Declining Power

The Trump Era

Partisan Politics and the Democracy Delusion

Bad (or ‘sic’) Reasons

The Devil is in the Details

Live and Let Die

Brave New 1984

Just Being Realistic

Christianity with American Characteristics

Freedom for the Lobotomised

The Freedom of Others

CHAPTER 3: WESTERN-STYLE DEMOCRACIES

Who’s Got the Biggest?

What You Don’t Know

Who’s Got the Largest?

Who’s the greatest?

Who’s the drunkest?

The Odd Couple

The Western Front

Who’s The Oldest?

Let Them Eat Cake

A Load of Bull

Tragedy!

The Only Democracy in the Middle East (?)

CHAPTER 4: THE ALTERNATIVES

Who’s the ‘Best’?

The (Almost) Real Democracy

Who’s the ‘Baddest’?

Americans Go Home

Cuba ‘Libre’

The Chinese Perspective: Meritocratic Democracy

CHAPTER 5: EVOLUTIONARY DEMOCRACY

Evolutionary Everything

The State of Evolution

Great Apes

Chest Beating

The Best Words

Rankers

Made in the USA

Evolution of the United States

Ignorance is Bliss (for the Ignorant)

None of Your Business!

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION

Not all Americans are Trumps but all Trumps are Americans

Fake News

If Seven People Tell You You’re Sick, Lie Down

‘Barr None’

A Beastly People with a Beastly Religion

God Help Us

A Special Place in Hell

The Dregs of Humanity

United We Stand

The Empire Strikes Out

The American ‘Elite’

Beneath the Dignity

A Pitiful Excuse

The Trump Turd

Coincidences, or Not

Rapture

A Maher of Morons

Buck the System!

The Dumbest (Delusional) Democracy on Earth

Apples and Pears

Diversity or Death

¡Hasta la Victoria Siempre (Ojalá)!

Postface

Appendices

Appendix 1

The Stupid (and Dangerous) States of America as of 2017

Appendix 2

BDA (Boycott Donald’s America)

Appendix 3

Democracy Survey

Appendix 4

The ‘Anti-Trump’

Appendix 5

Disclaimer, Final Apologies and Last Drop of Bile

Notes

Apologies To

any Sicilian-Irish American woman who didn’t back Trump; any polite Republican sisters from Texas who didn’t back Trump and any polite Texan men too young to vote for Trump in 2016 even though they wanted to (in their case, as a result of their age, saved from being ‘deplorable’ by one example of a reasonable restriction regarding competence to vote for a leader at the level of a national state); Asian-Americans who didn’t back Trump; ‘J-Street’ Jewish Americans who didn’t back Trump; Latin (first and foremost) Americans who didn’t back Trump; Native Americans who didn’t back Trump; black Americans who didn’t back Trump; white Americans who backed Bernie Sanders and didn’t switch to Trump; white Americans who backed Jill Stein and didn’t switch to Trump (probably all of them); and any Americans who self-identify as Communist.

Abbreviations used throughout

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The Same But Different

Human beings are wired to build states in the way that ants build anthills and bees build hives. If every state in the world were disbanded today, human beings would, by their grouping nature, go about rebuilding them. As with anthills and beehives, there is strength in numbers and things can be achieved by the group that could not be achieved by any individual, hence the creation of states of various sizes and characteristics ever since human populations first laid claim to territory. Again, as with ants and bees, grouping produces hierarchy and, as a result, some individuals have more influence on decisions concerning the state as a whole than do others.

Human beings are also, on average, particularly intelligent in relation to other animals. For this reason, they are able to formulate opinions concerning, for example, how large they would ideally like the territory controlled by their state to be, how large its population would ideally be, what sort of relations it should have with other states, what form the relationship between the state and its citizens should take, and which individual or individuals should be entrusted with making these and other decisions.

The result is that all states are in many ways the same. They impose their laws and taxes on their citizens, willing or otherwise, and they have a leader, elected or otherwise. They have a capital, a flag, and, at the national level, a national anthem and various national narratives that serve the purpose of unifying the state and making the largest number of citizens possible feel that they are members of one nation, patriotic enough to want to contribute towards the advancement of the state, even at the expense of their own lives if necessary.

These narratives have their own particularities but many themes are common, for example the men of the state being the bravest, the women the most beautiful, people in general the kindest (unless they are provoked, in which case they become fierce warriors), the food the most delicious, the landscapes the most picturesque.

A newly-appointed Ghanaian president replaced the word ‘Americans’ with ‘Ghanaians’ when he recited, "Though our challenges are fearsome, so are our strengths. Ghanaians have been a restless, questing, hopeful people. And we must bring to our task today the vision and will of those who came before us," but the same could have been stated by any president of any national state with the approbation of a majority of its citizens, in the way that the name of any state could be inserted into ‘Make …….. Great Again!’

Even so, the worldview of citizens of other states tends to be regarded as strange, sometimes illogical, often inferior. It may seem this way to westerners when citizens of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) put their family name before their ‘first’ name, recite the points of the compass beginning with East, eat with chopsticks and ceramic spoons, and have one dominant political party.

For most Chinese, at least to date, the family name carries the most meaning and it is therefore logical to put it first; the sun rises in the East so it is equally logical to begin from there; sharp metallic objects are most suitable for carving up flesh on battlefields and in kitchens but not so much so for dining tables (and they may impart a metallic taste to the food). Likewise, having more than one political party with the power to produce the highest-ranking leader of the state creates various degrees of conflict amongst citizens, illogical if the main purpose of the state is understood to be that of bringing citizens together in an extended family that, to use a phrase increasingly rejected in the West in recent times, is ‘stronger together’.

The most significant way in which states differ is, therefore, the specific character of each individual state, and this is a function of numerous factors, not least of which geography and the specific character of other states with which it comes into contact, but also the ideologies of its leaders throughout its history, and of those who had inspired them.

The character of the state founded in 1949 as the People’s Republic of China has been profoundly influenced by the ideologies of philosophers such as Confucius and Mencius, and in more recent times by those of Marx and Mao. The PRC, at least to date, still embraces the idea of the establishment in the shortest timeframe possible of a non-authoritarian communist state, where human beings will be free to fulfil their potential but will not have the right to exploit others for labour or rent, and where the state’s primary function will be to guarantee that the needs of all are satisfied and inequalities of rights cease to exist.

The PRC’s conception of democracy is also as unique as it is difficult to comprehend for many citizens of other states, in particular those commonly referred to as Western-style democracies (WSDs), but it may be a mistake to think that the PRC is not a democracy at all or that it would necessarily be better for humanity as a whole if the western model of democracy were to become the only model of democracy.

Competing Utopias, Competing Democracies

WSDs are states that permit a vast majority of their adult population to vote in elections for the highest-ranking, and possibly also lesser-ranking, leader(s) of the state. Levels of political democracy, for example the degree to which individuals can influence political decisions beyond the election of leaders, vary from one state to another, as do levels of individual freedom, freedom of the press and human rights.

WSDs strive towards a capitalist conception of utopia where all citizens are free to own land, to create employment, and to contribute to the welfare of others to the extent they see fit. Free markets are believed to essentially regulate themselves to the benefit of all as each individual pursues their own interest, with the wealth of the richest ultimately trickling down to the poorest.

Some of these states might prioritise policies that promote various forms of equality, others might not, although to date most have gone through cycles of both. The former is often referred to as left-wing and the latter right-wing², terms with their origins in political assemblies where those more opposed to the monarchy, and by extension more pro-equality, generally sat grouped together on the left in the France of the late 18th century.

WSDs view China as not being a democracy at all, primarily because the leaders are chosen by a very restricted number of individuals who must themselves be members of the dominant Communist Party of China (CPC), but also for reasons less, or not necessarily at all, connected with the meaning of democracy, for example the perception of China as a state where individuals lack freedom and human rights in comparison to WSDs, and the belief that democracy and capitalism are interlinked.

From the perspective of the PRC, capitalism has no place in any utopia. It is understood as a barbaric phenomenon which is characteristic of a very early and uncivilised state of humanity, where tenants and salaried workers are little more than the slaves of earlier times, increasingly poorer in relation to increasingly wealthier landlords and employers. If humanity is judged by the situation of the poorest, then capitalism may always be as civilized as an individual left to die of cold or starvation in a gutter, no matter how wealthy the wealthiest become.

Socialism, the level of civilisation that must be surpassed in order to achieve a communist utopia, is currently considered in the PRC to be more a matter of control of the means of production than the ownership of it, a perspective that is missed by those in the West who claim that China is now a capitalist state like any other. Citizens of ‘socialist China’ have the right to own individual property (if not land), something that is not in contradiction with their interpretation of communism either, but they also currently have the right to exploit others for labour and rent as in capitalist WSDs, something that certainly would be in contradiction to communism.

The PRC, at least to date, still views the mechanisms of capitalism as evils to be done away with as soon as its stage of development makes this possible, until which time the state assumes the responsibility of ‘playing with fire’ by trying its best to control them. It is understood that landlords, by the nature of their activity, might easily become contemptuous and contemptible individuals, but the long-term objective is to develop a society where this particular ‘profession’ becomes a thing of the past, like that of transatlantic slave traders. In the meantime it is not those engaged in this activity, or the extension of it known as property development, who should gain privileged access to high political office.

Likewise, in socialist China it is still possible for some people to employ others who, in order to survive, are to a significant degree obliged to accept whatever is offered to them, and this mechanism of capitalism has been used by the state to increase development throughout this ‘early phase’. However, the relationship between the employer and the ‘employed by obligation’, like that between landlord and ‘tenant by obligation’, or master and slave, is considered to be a dehumanising one for both parties. For this reason, certain employers, like landlords, are recognised as being individuals that may be able to benefit the state at this point in its history even if they have nothing but the intention of benefitting themselves. Even so, such individuals should be prevented from using any financial influence they may thereby accrue to accede to leadership positions within a state that has committed itself to prioritising the wellbeing of all citizens.

In a communist utopia, envisioned in the most general terms as ‘from each according to their ability to each according to their needs’, humanity will have evolved to the point where sufficient wealth for all will have been created by the mastery of automation and artificial intelligence, and the state’s role will be to ensure that all may benefit. Men without wealth will no longer primarily serve the purpose of driving and constructing for the wealthy, and women, and ever younger girls, primarily that of cleaning and providing sexual services for the same, all of which may be considered logical, inevitable and even highly desirable by many adepts of capitalism.

In such a communist utopia, we could image that machines would be able to provide all the services that are currently provided by various human slaves and employees by obligation, meeting all the needs, from the most sophisticated to the most base, and even the perverted, of all human beings. The caste-like phenomenon of humans becoming beastly as a result of their beastly treatment of others would disappear and all individuals, not only the most privileged ones, would become free, in a meaningful rather than delusional sense of the word, to pursue their talents.

We could equally imagine that the inhuman method of giving life to animals and feeding them, only to later slaughter them for food, would become as unthinkable as cannibalism is now as a result of, for example, advanced meat-cell cloning technology, and that humans would never again place demands on the environment based on little more than the hope of developing technologies they are yet to possess.

Such outcomes are harder to reconcile with the concept of a capitalist utopia, not least due to the capitalist revulsion at any ‘ideal of equality’, intertwined with religious and mystical beliefs concerning a divine creator of the market and human inequalities, each person receiving what they deserve, possibly even being rewarded or punished for their actions in a previous life, with women created as helpers for men, animals created to provide them with food, and the environment created as a ‘garden’ to do with as they please.

As for democracy, in the PRC it is understood as a matter of power to the people as opposed to power to a select group of people, with capitalism understood as a matter of power to a select group of people (the owners of capital), and therefore in contradiction to democracy. The reasoning here is that any citizen of the PRC may decide to enter politics and have a fair chance of someday influencing political decisions at the highest level, whereas nobody is able to ‘choose’ to be an owner of (largely inherited) capital.

All citizens of the PRC are guaranteed the right to elect and be elected, but only up to the level they have acquired sufficient competence for. The idea that all citizens are already competent enough to select the uppermost leaders of the entire national state is generally considered to be as illogical as the idea that all citizens currently have the competence to vote for which gymnasts should represent the state in the Olympics.

Socrates argued the same point with the analogy of which members of society, all of them or only those competent in seafaring, should choose who would be best to captain a ship on a voyage through perilous waters, and Confucius was very much of the same opinion as Socrates. However, whereas WSDs have abandoned the view of Socrates, possibly even since the time that Socrates himself was sentenced to death by ‘popular vote’, the Chinese of the PRC have remained faithful to their Confucian conception of meritocratic democracy.

What’s in a Name?

Shakespeare famously wrote What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. This was a persuasive argument for Juliet to use in order to convince Romeo that their love was more important than their family name, but the reality is that names assigned to people, objects and concepts matter enormously because of the significance of the thoughts they provoke in us, and these thoughts will not be the same for all.

A dictionary may provide concise definitions for words such as capitalism, communism and socialism, but these are examples of words that have also been elaborated upon in detail in numerous lengthy philosophical treatises, many in total contradiction to others as regards analyses of what constitutes their most significant attributes, and this is complicated even more by the fact that word meanings, in particular those of abstract words, are fluid, forever open to reinterpretation.

Amongst those who have used the word socialist at least in part to define themselves or their political party, or have been defined as such by others, are politicians as diverse as Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Bernie Sanders, and a ‘socialist’ belief in the role of the state to include the protection of its citizens against poverty and exploitation is something that may indeed be applied to all three of them.

Hitler and Stalin, however, had in common the essential characteristics of authoritarianism, megalomania and racism which resulted in the discrimination against, deportation of, and, in a world where leaders could act with even more impunity, and human lives were considered even more expendable than is currently the case in all but the least developed regions of our world, the eventual extermination of those considered to be foreign and/or inferior elements.

If the word ‘socialism’ were now universally accepted as essentially meaning state ‘ownership’ of all commercial activity, then it is likely that very few of those currently self-identifying as socialist would continue to do so. However, if it were universally accepted as essentially meaning, as in the PRC today, the state assuming the responsibility of overseeing all commercial activity with the objective of trying to ensure that crises, financial and otherwise, are minimised to the benefit of all of its citizens, then there may be more people around the world willing to identify as socialist than do so at present.

Likewise, if the word ‘communism’ were now universally accepted as essentially meaning the dismantlement of states and the eradication of even the very concept of private property, then we could well imagine that only a few of those currently self-identifying as communist would continue to do so. However, if it were accepted as essentially meaning, as in the PRC today, a utopia where the state’s primary function would be to ensure that all forms of exploitation would cease to exist and all citizens would be free to develop their full potential, an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all as Marx put it, then there may be many more people around the world willing to identify as communist than do so at present.

The PRC, being a state itself, does not envisage a stateless world and, in the way that state-building is an extension of the innate grouping nature of humans that would necessitate a significant evolutionary development to eradicate, so private property is also a product of human, and other animal, nature. Animals mark their territories in various ways and defend their possessions from others, and humans are no exception. Imagining there are no possessions, even if you try, isn’t easy.

In the United Kingdom (UK), land has traditionally been owned by the monarchy and other members of the aristocracy, with other citizens only permitted to access it in return for accepting various forms of exploitation. Many of these citizens, along with those from other European states in a similar situation, decided to go to America and appropriate the land of Native Americans so that they too might one day be able to acquire additional wealth by means of the exploitation of others.

In the PRC, citizens currently obtain long-term land use rights on land - which constitutes a part of the territory laid claim to by the state and, from a communist perspective, cannot permanently ‘belong’ to any individual - for a period of many decades to many centuries, similar to the long-term leases on the significant percentage of land that is still owned by the aristocracy in the UK. The essential difference here is that the PRC, at least to date, still views the permanent ‘ownership’ by individuals of portions of our planet as immoral as it is delusional.

The Shape of Things to Come

In 1933, H.G. Wells wrote a book speculating that, by as early as 1956, humanity would be moving towards the establishment of a world state in which utopia would be envisaged as a world where everyone would be comparable in intelligence level to the greatest geniuses of earlier times. In reality, the United Nations (UN) currently recognises 195 states, 193 of them as UN members, and the list still has potential for growth. Equally, a man probably best known for boasting about the possibility of grabbing women by the pussy without prior consent (GBP) has been elected as the leader of what is currently the most powerful Western-style democracy in the world.

It is therefore clear that predicting anything about the future can never be an exact science, and it is increasingly less so as one speculates further forwards from the present. Wells correctly predicted Germany going to war against Poland by 1940, but incorrectly predicted that this war would last for ten years and that Britain would remain neutral. Moving forwards to 1979, he speculated that this would be the year that Islam would cease to exist as a religion, ironic in that this was the precise year in which the Islamic Revolution took place in Iran.

Although from the Chinese perspective, profoundly influenced by Marx in this regard, imagining a future in which both capitalism and an end to all forms of exploitation co-exist is like imagining the fitting of a square peg into a round hole, the idea cannot definitively be dismissed, however unlikely it may be, that capitalism will someday find its edges ‘rounded off’ sufficiently for this to occur.

The introduction of a universal basic income (UBI) in a capitalist state, which, by means of technological advances in artificial intelligence and automation will have become wealthy enough to ensure that the amount allocated to each citizen is sufficient for them never to need to accept the exploitation of their labour as an alternative to going without food and shelter, would approximate to a communist utopia.

The significant difference here might be that the communist state would be expected to, firstly, ensure that no individuals have land ownership ‘rights’, and, secondly, to assume the responsibility of providing homes for all citizens, for rent or for sale in the relatively early stages of the state’s development, before the entirety of a budget sufficient to provide for this could be supplied, for example, by a tax on sales of finished goods and services alone. Without this, individuals with land ownership privileges, and properties for rent in a situation where properties are scarce, would be in a position to obtain for themselves a disproportionate share of state funds, notably by appropriating a maximum of the UBI received by others without such privileges, in the form of rent.

The Chinese, by their history, were already primed to be receptive to the warnings of Marx concerning the self-destructive mechanisms of capitalism, and how trying to ‘fine tune’ them in a society which seems on the surface to be doing perfectly well with them may not be sufficient to avoid ultimate collapse. The illustrious Han Dynasty, with all its economic wealth and technological breakthroughs, came to an end largely as a result of a famine in the north of its territory obliging its citizens there to accept exploitation in the south or starve. They ultimately chose the third option, rebellion, and the Han dynasty collapsed.

As regards the future of democracy, it seems likely that advances in technology will enable the advancement of direct democracy as opposed to representative democracy, with an increasing number of citizens participating in decisions that go well beyond expressing their preference for a leader. Such a preference for a leader may in any case be virtually irrelevant for many citizens in WSDs who know in advance that a majority of voters in their constituency will almost certainly prefer a different candidate, after which time the elected will proceed to make decisions as they please, without necessarily respecting the views of even those who voted for them, or their own pre-election promises.

Direct democracy is not in contradiction to Chinese meritocratic democracy and so it seems likely to develop in China too, as the desire to express preferences is common to all human beings, just as is the impossibility of having any choice in the most fundamental issues of all. Shakespeare’s line To be, or not to be; that is the question is widely known, but less so is the answer he goes on to provide: that when it comes to the most fundamental questions of all, whether or not to be born at all and in what form we will continue to exist after our death, we have no choice whatsoever. In the meantime, the best that human beings can do is make the limited choices available and accept the responsibility for any resulting actions, and direct democracy fits well with this.

The difference in the form that direct democracy may take in the PRC could well be, as in the case of its current jury system, that citizens will need to first prove their competence to make certain decisions, and the more significant the decision to the state as a whole, the higher the level of proof of competence will need to be.

In both WSDs and the PRC, only those citizens who decide they actually want to drive a motor vehicle and subsequently pass tests designed to ensure they have acquired at least a minimum level of competence to do so are permitted to drive without supervision, largely because incompetent drivers may be a danger to themselves and others. When it comes to direct democracy, it might eventually become an accepted premise that some sort of instruction and assessment is necessary before allowing people to vote, in order to avoid states being driven to destruction, economic collapse, or harming others as a result of incompetence, a possibility that fits well with the Chinese concept of meritocratic democracy.

At this point in time, however, and with the level of technology currently available, it is hard to imagine that a majority of citizens of the PRC will soon be voting for a leader at the highest level. This is not only due to the lack of preparation for this task amongst the current general population but also because of the risk of outside interference in the voting process, both in terms of propaganda and hacking, as was recently the case with Russia influencing, possibly even decisively, the outcome of the presidential election in the US.

Gender Matters

Gender really does matter in politics, international relations, and life in general. Unfortunately, feminists have, to date at least, tended to minimise and even totally deny innate gender differences, albeit for a reason: nothing can be done to change them but human societies can change and that, therefore, is all we should be concerned with, they argue.

Unfortunately for such feminists, innate differences are visible to all, with male primates who share up to 98.8% of their DNA with humans also tending to be larger, more muscular, more aggressive and more violent than female primates, something that obviously cannot be explained, in their case, entirely by social construction. It is this observable preponderance of aggression and violence amongst males of our species and other species, including domestic animals, which is at the root of characteristics such as these being termed masculine. The females of these species have tended to display more nurturing activities and empathy than males (for example female primates observed stroking and patting those which seemed despondent), which is at the root of these characteristics being termed feminine.

Of course, males will display varying degrees of masculinity and females of femininity, with some females being more masculine than most males and some males being more feminine than most females (and this not only applies to the human species), but as long as more males display more aggression, to take just one example, than females, aggression will be considered masculine.

The problem when feminists deny what is easily observable to even the most uneducated person, especially when they use spurious arguments such as it not being possible to compare humans with even the most closely related of other species, is that all their other arguments and analyses are subsequently not given the consideration they deserve, and not only, as some of these feminists might want to believe, by men who would dismiss anything argued by anyone, female or male, self-identifying as a feminist.

A study by Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge in the UK, demonstrated that levels of foetal testosterone were positively correlated with a high aptitude for systemizing and negatively correlated with an aptitude for empathising. As foetal testosterone affects individuals before they are born and can experience any form of socialization, Baron-Cohen posited that females would, on average, develop a higher aptitude than males for empathizing, and this is indeed what he found, with even new-born baby girls found to keep eye contact with others for longer than were new-born baby boys.

If anyone doubted the significance of gender in politics, the recent example of Marco Rubio insinuating that Donald Trump must have a small penis for a man of his height because his fingers are particularly short, something that from an anatomical perspective would be likely, and Trump needing to defend himself by literally ‘guaranteeing’ that it wasn’t, and implying that the contrary were true, something that from an anatomical perspective would be unlikely, then they should maybe give the matter (gender, not Trump’s appendages) more thought.

There was no doubt that Trump insinuating he had a large penis would help his campaign and that the opposite would harm it. Likewise, his frequent displays of other masculine characteristics such as aggression, and even violence, benefitted his campaign, to the bafflement of those with no understanding of, or interest in, matters of gender. The reason for this is that in primate species, including that of humans at this stage of our evolution, aggressive and violent males of the species have monopolised positions of leadership and most humans continue to associate the most masculine individuals, however repugnant, vulgar, incompetent, and possibly even weak and cowardly, with such positions.

Being, on average, the most intelligent of the primates, humans are capable of understanding that feminine characteristics such as empathy and the related willingness to make compromises could be more relevant for the leader of a state, especially now in our increasingly interrelated system of states and regional groupings, than are masculine ones such as aggression and violence, but, to date, masculine individuals, usually of the male sex, have monopolised these positions in our species too.

In the rare cases up to now where females, not related, usually as wife or daughter, to a previous male leader, have been elected as the highest-ranking leader of a national state, they have tended to display little empathy and other feminine characteristics, because they are/were by nature rather masculine individuals and/or because they feel/felt the need to ‘compensate’ for not being males.

Iron Ladies

If a more feminine individual, female or male, had been elected in place of Golda Meir following the war of 1967, this person may have possessed a level of empathy sufficient to make compromises that could have led to a peaceful and mutually beneficial two-state agreement with the Palestinians, thereby possibly also avoiding the damaging, both for Israel’s military and its credibility, war of 1973.

Indeed, the credibility of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, which claimed at the time (as it still does and as do intelligence agencies of all national states), to be aware of the exact nature of any and all imminent threats to the state, was damaged by an unforseen coalition of Arab states massing on Israel’s borders, and beyond, which succeeded in taking its military by surprise. The credibility of Israel’s military was then harmed by its heavy losses in comparison to the war of 1967, and finally its political credibility suffered after its subsequent refusal to return the most significant of the territories captured to that date so that the largest, the West Bank, might eventually become the principal territory of a sovereign state for Palestinians who do not identify with any other national state.

In the same state of Israel in more recent times, Tzipi Livni won the 2009 presidential election but the president at the time, Shimon Peres, decided for the first time in Israel’s history to allow the losing candidate, in this case Benjamin Netanyahu, the first attempt at forming a government. The official reason for Peres’ decision, following private consultations with the parties concerned, was that Livni would be unlikely to be able form a government due to a lack of possible coalition partners.

However, it is also possible that the reason she was not even given the opportunity to try, as would have been customary, is that Netanyahu was able to persuade an aging president that a female leader, already committed to the idea of a two-state solution with the Palestinians, would not be suitable to lead at a time when, according to Netanyahu, Israel was facing an existential threat from Iran. Livni’s defenders emphasised her past in the military and the Mossad to portray her as being sufficiently masculine for the job, but her detractors pointed out that she hadn’t ever actually killed anybody and that, on the contrary, she had been a vegetarian since the age of twelve, clearly demonstrating her overly sensitive feminine nature.

Livni was also known to be fluent in French and this made her appear relatively refined and intellectual, and therefore even more feminine, in the eyes of many, speaking French being a perceived defect that had also feminised the male John Kerry to his detriment in the US. Netanyahu, who by the way is said to possess an elementary grasp of French himself but is more careful not to display it in public, is still leader to this date and the peace process, at best, au point mort.

In the India of 1975, had Indira Gandhi been willing or able to display more feminine characteristics, she may not have responded to political unrest and student agitation by becoming arguably the world’s only female dictator to date, refusing the possibility of being replaced in office until the time of her choosing, having most of her political opponents imprisoned, and overseeing a forced mass-sterilisation campaign amongst individuals considered to be of ‘low caste’, accompanied by the destruction of the housing of many of the same.

If Margaret Thatcher had been willing or able to display more feminine characteristics during her time in office as Prime Minister of the UK throughout the 1980s, she may have found a more empathetic way of dealing with the situation of people faced with few possibilities for employment outside of mining at a time when this activity was no longer profitable, and an individual more feminine than Angela Merkel as Chancellor of Germany might have had a sufficiently high level of empathy not to feel the need to ‘punish’ Greeks with austerity measures at a time when it was clear, even to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that they were in need of debt relief and stimulus, the financial manifestations of empathy and encouragement.

Pussies

A pussy, as well as being a slang term for a vagina now known throughout the world thanks to Donald Trump, is, by extension, commonly used in the US as a derogatory term for males who are considered to be not sufficiently masculine in the opinion of others. As masculinity is still considered to be a requisite for leadership, any males widely perceived in this way, regardless of their actual level of masculinity, will not be able to win elections, at least not at present.

For example, although homosexual males may be more or less masculine individuals, with some being extremely masculine, the misconception that all homosexual males are feminine puts them at a considerable disadvantage when it comes to acceding to elected office. The result of this is that there have not, to date, been any openly homosexual males who have become the highest ranking leaders of national states by winning elections (although two so far have been appointed to this position), considerably fewer even than there have been females, regardless of their sexuality, themselves already very few.

As regards heterosexual males, unlike in other primates where the alpha male must physically defeat other males to preserve his position, human males with leadership ambitions no longer need to be competent fighters in physical terms, being judged primarily by their words, both spoken and written. Joe Biden, for example, despite being a man who may well have been able to take Donald Trump behind a gym and thrash him as he claimed he would have liked to, being that Biden is in observably better physical condition than Trump and has a background in contact sports that Trump lacks, would be considered the more feminine of the two due at least in part to his advocacy of women’s rights throughout his career.

Trump is considered to be an alpha male, and therefore a suitable candidate for leadership, not due to any direct displays of physical prowess on his part but primarily due to unsubstantiated claims he has made concerning his own masculinity, for example that he is well-endowed, likes to fight, including physically, and can get away with GBP as a result of being famous. He consolidated this reputation by aligning himself with those who have proved themselves skilled to varying degrees in physical combat, for example professional boxers and a former boxing promoter, Don King, who does have a confirmed kill on his record and may have the street where the killing took place named in his (dis)honour: ‘only in America’ is a famous King ‘punch line’.

Trump’s election victory may, amongst other factors, highlight to what extent the preference for leaders perceived as being highly masculine is linked to the level of education of the voters, with the least educated being most impressed by perceived masculinity. Amongst college graduates, four percent more voted for Hillary Clinton over Trump, but amongst those with a postgraduate level of education this rose to a considerable 21% advantage for Clinton.

This may to an extent be attributed to the hypothesis that more educated voters will make decisions less as a result of those instincts we share with other primates, and this largely because their education has made them aware of such instincts in themselves as well as in others, and has enabled them to attain the level of abstract thinking required to override them when available evidence suggests it would be more in their interest to do so.

Better educated women may have been more able to reason that such a leader could set an example for other men, and boys, and that even those women who liked the idea of being touched by a man such as Trump in that way might not if the perpetrator of the GBP were not a star, senior politician, or otherwise high-status male. Likewise, they would probably object if, as now seems more likely, their daughters ever became the victims of GBP at the hands of a low-status but emboldened male.

Some might claim that Obama was elected in the US despite not being the most masculine of men but such an argument has certain flaws. Obama, being black, would not, whatever anyone may feel about the reasons for this, be put in a position to have to defend the size of his penis or his physical capabilities. He was, however, well aware of the importance of a politician seeking election to appear highly masculine, something he made a determined effort to demonstrate at the time of the killing of Osama bin Laden (as did Hillary Clinton), and, on a less serious but still telling level, by him feeling the need to publicly react to the seemingly insignificant ‘accusation’ that he is a shitty golfer.

The awareness of the need not to appear too feminine may also explain to varying degrees why more immigrants were deported during his time in office than during that of all other US presidents combined up to the Trump era and why the use of targeted killings, including for the first time of a US citizen, was expanded under his administration, to the point that Trump has inherited a considerable targeted killing capability.

Killing in this manner may be cowardly, especially when the order is given by a commander-in-chief who has never seen combat and might even have actively shirked it, but some might argue that this is advantageous for America as those killed are likely to be mostly terrorists. Here too a gender perspective is useful as it makes a clear distinction between justification and explanation:

Terrorists target innocents, something for which there is no justification, to influence political decisions, and this because they believe the decision-makers and perpetrators of those decisions to be relatively inaccessible targets. The explanation is that humans in general, and the more masculine ones in particular, have a tendency to react violently to various forms of humiliation, with occupation and drone strikes being amongst the most humiliating in our world at present.

Accused terrorists being captured and given a fair trial is therefore far less likely to result in more young men deciding to engage in terrorist activity than is the expansion of targeted killings, in particular when others not in any way suspected of wrongdoing are killed due to errors or negligence, even more so when they are children or women. Too much of anything is a bad thing, including testosterone, and the most masculine men are the ones who tend to feel most passionately that the women in their societies ‘belong’ to them and that if anyone is going to harm these women in any way, it should only ever be them.

Elephant in the Room

Hillary Clinton famously complimented Donald Trump on his children, something that probably wouldn’t have impressed supporters of animal rights and the protection of endangered species as this compliment followed the public release of photographs of his two older sons posing with dead animals, and animal parts, after paying to hunt endangered wildlife in Zimbabwe, a WSD in sub-Saharan Africa. Eric Trump was pictured proudly holding a dead leopard and Donald Jr a freshly severed elephant tail³ in his left hand and a knife in his right, and, as sons of former presidents in WSDs are in an extremely privileged position should they ever choose to run for office themselves, as was the case for George W. Bush, one of these two ‘proudly macho’ characters could well be a future president of the US.

Trump justified his sons’ actions by saying he was a strong believer in the Second Amendment, something that would seem out of context to the point of being nonsensical in China and in many other parts of the world but that his supporters in the US could relate to. The elephant in the room is that in order for the Trump boys not to have such a strong chance of continuing the Trump political dynasty, feminists in the US would need to advance the argument that feminine qualities such as empathy would make women, and not the most masculine ones, more suitable candidates for the leadership of civilised modern national states than most men. Instead, it can be expected they will continue to advance arguments more in line with their current agenda, for example that women could take just as much pleasure from torturing and butchering animals as men if only society didn’t discourage them.

Such arguments are futile because, aside from not being desirable, the idea that just as many women as men could take pleasure from taking innocent life, when women are by nature givers of life, is simply not logical. They are damaging because, in the absence of logical and persuasive arguments for selecting women leaders, men such as Trump, even when accused of draft-dodging and cowardice themselves, can still stand before veterans and be taken seriously when they ridicule the idea that a woman could ever be their ‘boss’.

In the meantime, such feminists seem quite satisfied when male leaders surround themselves with women ministers and members of parliament, as in the case of Kagame’s Rwanda with a majority of women in his Cabinet and 63.8% of women in Rwanda’s Chamber of Deputies, a figure which currently tops the table of the percentage of women in national state parliaments. However, from a gender perspective, as opposed to the perspective of his admirers amongst American feminists, it seems clear that Kagame has chosen to surround himself with women because they represent less of a threat to his masculinity, his leadership and ultimately his life.

As he is a most dominant leader, the combined substantive power of these women is negligible, as was that of Idi Amin’s actress-model choice for minister of foreign affairs or, to take a European example, Alain Juppé’s ‘Jupettes’ (‘short-skirts’) in France, the twelve women given those government positions considered most feminine, and therefore lower ranking, for a few months in 1995, but earning Juppé a reputation amongst his general public and uncritical feminists as a champion of women’s representation, rather than that of a vain and insecure man. Berlusconi in Italy was another example of a European man wanting to surround himself with women, especially the type of woman Trump likes to refer to as a nice piece of ass, and pass this off as a belief in equal representation, although in his case his motives were apparent to nearly all, at least in Italy.

In the same way that China will be increasingly looked to for example in the Trump era in the areas of free trade, environmentalism and non-interventionism (unless called upon to intervene by the UN), likewise it will be looked to for example in all areas pertaining to equality, including for women. The danger is that women in China may themselves take inspiration from the capitalist feminism of the US that prioritises material wealth for women, something that inevitably resulted in the election of a man who claimed to be in a position to provide that to ‘his girls’, but it can be hoped they will return to their original communist conception of feminism which recognises innate differences and emphasises the contribution of each individual according to their ability to society as whole.

The Chinese government is currently faced with the problem of an ageing population, an incentive for it to encourage a sufficient number of women to have more children, which often means more time spent at home compared to men. However, the recognition of innate differences between men and women in general, whilst at the same time recognising as equals those whose gender and/or sexual orientation does not correspond with the majority of their biological sex, may well be used by Chinese women to their benefit in the post-Trump era, by which time China should be recognised as the world’s principal superpower and the population of China should be growing in line with its economic growth and influence.

Chinese women will then find themselves in an ideal position to put forward their innate advantage as regards empathy, along with other innate advantages such as their generally needing to spend less of their time and energy pursuing sexual gratification than men, leaving them more time for matters of state, as rational and scientifically well-founded arguments for why it would be in the interest of the state as a whole that they assume a percentage of positions of leadership at least equal to those of men.

When it comes to representation of women at the highest levels of politics in the PRC, however, this is likely to be a matter of many decades as, just as for men, women need to enter politics immediately following university and spend their entire careers gaining knowledge and experience of public policy in a variety of posts to have the best chance of reaching the top (it’s not open to ‘any old Trump’), and the PRC is not interested in appointing ‘decorative’ females with no substantive power to impress the US, pacify the feminists and titillate the masculinists. Another impediment is that the current retirement age for women state employees even at the highest level is 55 (a good thing in certain respects but disadvantageous as regards high political office): however, the PRC appears willing to be flexible in order to encourage gender equality, for example with Liu Yandong currently still in office at age 71 (although this is likely to be her last year in office, not, like Trump, her first).

Intelligence Matters

Donald Trump has claimed that his I.Q. is one of the highest and that his cabinet has, by far the highest IQ of any cabinet ever assembled. Even without reading Trump’s incoherent tweets or the biographies of illustrious cabinet members of the US’s ‘Founding Fathers’, this claim is taken about as seriously by the Chinese as his claim that his steaks are the best in the world and that he’s going to built the most beautiful wall (the Chinese doubt it will be more beautiful than their Great Wall), but they do take seriously the possible threat posed to themselves and other states by a leader who would make such arrogant and ignorant comments.

IQ tests are generally taken by children to assess how intelligent they are compared to others of their age: for example, a particularly intelligent child of 10 may have scored what would be expected of an average 16 year old, resulting in an IQ of 160 (and an American child, Marilyn vos Savant, was therefore credited with an IQ of 228 for scoring at age 10 what would have been expected of an American adult of almost 23). This is misleading, however, when geniuses such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, who never took IQ tests, are often attributed estimated IQs no higher than 160, resulting in frequent tabloid headlines concerning 10 to 12 year olds with IQs reportedly higher than theirs and, depending on the test taken, sometimes considerably so (although the maximum on the MENSA test is currently set at 161 for adults and 162 for under-18s). Hawking, by the way, many years prior to Trump’s claims, was quoted as saying that, people who boast about their IQ are losers, although if he were still alive, he might now want to add ‘except in US presidential elections’.

The only US President known to have taken an IQ test to date was John F. Kennedy, who scored 119. Kennedy, however, took the test as a young adult, shortly before entry to university, and therefore could not be expected to compete with the highest IQs attributed to the most precocious 10 to 12 year olds. His score was already around 20 points above the average American and his level of intelligence seemed to increase with age, judging by his subsequent performance at university (he graduated cum laude and had made the ‘Dean’s List’ at Harvard), the critical acclaim of his publications, the quality of the statements attributed to him, and his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962:

When the Soviet Union, under Nikita Khrushchev, began building ballistic missile sites in Cuba, which posed an imminent nuclear threat to the United States, Kennedy was able to draw not only on his naval experience gained during WW2 - he was awarded the Purple Heart Medal for injuries sustained in combat, which would probably make him a ‘loser’ in the opinion of Donald Trump - and the diplomatic knowledge and skills acquired during his studies of International Affairs at Harvard and during his time working alongside his Ambassador father at the American Embassy in the UK, but also on the analytical skills corresponding to his high IQ.

After giving his go-ahead to the imposition of a naval blockade to buy time for an eventual diplomatic solution, he decided to accept a compromise that would allow Khrushchev to claim victory: American missiles would be removed from Turkey and the US would guarantee not to try again to invade Cuba, and in return the Soviets would retreat. In this way, a nuclear war was avoided.

This was despite Kennedy’s Joint Chiefs of Staff having advised him to do what Trump would have probably referred to as ‘bomb the hell out of them’. Ego and machismo also had to be suppressed to a significant degree, especially as any compromise could be considered an act of appeasement, following on, as it did, so closely from the widely-criticised appeasement of Hitler at the outset of World War II, and even more so after an American pilot was shot down and killed on the 12th day of the crisis.

Certainly, as regards ego and machismo, a WW2 veteran capable of the ‘conquests’ of Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich would not need to risk all-out nuclear war for fear of being labelled a ‘pussy’ himself by certain of his more deplorable compatriots but, even leaving the question of the temperament of the two men aside, Trump has never displayed anywhere near the level of intelligence Kennedy quite clearly possessed in order to conceptualize problems and solutions of such complexity. Of course, he may never need to...

Biased Bigly

There have been various studies conducted by American political scientists with the objective of ranking US Presidents according to estimates of their IQ, a notable one being that of Dean Simonton, a professor of psychology at UC-Davis, in 2006. As with all rankings based on estimations, even where there are good intentions and clearly-defined criteria, it seems impossible to completely eradicate biases, conscious and/or unconscious. Simonton’s estimates are implausibly high, for example with even Ronald Reagan being attributed an estimated IQ of an equally implausibly accurate ‘estimate’ of 131.9, almost 13 points more than Kennedy had achieved on an actual IQ test.

The highest estimated IQ attributed to a US president by Simonton is 165 to John Quincy Adams, higher than typical estimates for Einstein and Hawking. However, even if we assume that Simonton’s estimates are exaggerated by 20 to 30 points, nearly 30 points being the difference between Simonton’s estimate for Kennedy and Kennedy’s actual test score, that would still make Quincy Adams somebody who could be considered an intellectual genius, with an IQ of around 140.

Indeed, Quincy Adams was a graduate of Leiden University and, as well as being fluent in Dutch, and conversant in German, was also fluent in French, Latin and Greek, even translating works by Aristotle and Virgil, amongst others, and completed his postgraduate studies in law at Harvard. As Secretary of State he successfully negotiated the annexation of Florida to the US in 1819, notably without boasting of his ability to ‘make great deals’ or claiming a ‘big win’, and drafted the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, notably without claiming it to be the best doctrine since the Ten Commandments. The Monroe Doctrine, in advance of its times to the same extent as was Quincy Adams’ total rejection of slavery, was yet another testament to his intellect, with its rejection of colonialism and intervention in the affairs of others in the name of national interest, much in line with China’s worldview to date.

Something else Quincy Adams had in common with the Chinese worldview was the idea that democracy understood in terms of a ‘right’ for citizens to vote on matters for which they had not acquired the necessary competence, the root cause of the downfall of Ancient Athens of which he was highly knowledgeable, meant that, of all human governments, [Athenian] democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived. His father, John Adams, also an exceptionally intelligent individual and the US’s second president, had stated something very similar: there never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide; and James Madison, credited by Simonton with the joint highest IQ of the ‘Founding Fathers’ along with Thomas Jefferson, added that such democracies, "have even been spectacles of turbulence and contention... as short in their lives