A lot of people seem to think Donald Trump is prone to vulgar, irrational and insulting outbursts based on nothing more, as far as I can see, than the stuff he says and Tweets.  Which maybe we need to keep in perspective.  It could be a lot worse.

The "Trump is the end" crowd might find that sentiment as hard to follow as the MAGA hat people find any criticism of this great man.  But one of the perils of democratic debate is that we lose all perspective and demonize people over minor policy differences and comparatively trivial failings.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm all for holding politicians firmly to account and I'm frequently criticized as perfectionist because I like my "Conservatives" to adhere to at least a few recognizably conservative principles.  And while I don't want to dwell on Trump, it's hard to resist, not least because he alternately appalls and delights.

For instance he just got considerable grief for calling London mayor Sadiq Khan a "stone cold loser" (and misspelling his name).  But as Khan had just issued an appallingly ill-mannered objection to the president of the United States making a state visit, I frankly rather enjoyed that breach of protocol.

By contrast, I was very upset by a recent warning that someone's "lunatic ravings and babbling nonsense will only end up in the trash can of history."  Now, was that Trump in an overheated Tweet?  Or some foreign or domestic "never-Trumper" losing their cool over him?

No.  It was directed at the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.  And not by Sadiq Khan or AOC.  By a spokesbully for the Chinese foreign ministry.

What's remarkable here is not just the context, namely Pompeo saluting the bravery of those massacred in Tienanmen Square 30 years ago, which the Chinese government in classic totalitarian fashion has not misrepresented but erased from public consciousness.  It's the tone.  This abusive, lying tirade was the shameless official Chinese response to the senior diplomatic representative of a foreign nation.

OK, what's remarkable is that the tone is not remarkable.  Certain governments talk in this manner all the time, a nasty swaggering sound-track to accompany nasty swaggering actions.  And we don't even notice, let alone draw relevant conclusions.

Far from it.  In writing in Britain's left-wing standard Guardian newspaper on June 1 that it was "so un-British to be rolling out the red carpet this week for a formal state visit for a president whose divisive behaviour flies in the face of the ideals America was founded upon", Sadiq Khan wrote "Donald Trump is just one of the most egregious examples of a growing global threat.  The far right is on the rise around the world, threatening our hard-won rights and freedoms and the values that have defined our liberal, democratic societies for more than seventy years."

Now I stand to be corrected.  But I don't recall Khan issuing any warning against the aggressive Chinese dictatorship comparable to what he just said about the elected, accountable obnoxious president of the United States.  There's your lack of perspective.  Trump threatens decency and the survival of mankind whereas the Chinese communist tyrants our PM admitted in an unguarded moment to admiring for its efficiency and environmentalism, heck, they're our good buddies, allies in saving the climate, promoting peace and human rights and enhancing prosperity.

If you are old enough to remember the Cold War, or are up on its history, you'll remember the exquisitely awful quality of their unending stilted abuse.  Like the 1939 authoritative Stalinist History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) that called a number of Lenin's early stalwart companions like Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotskii himself "the Trotsky-Bukharin fiends", "Whiteguard insects" and "contemptible lackeys of the fascists".

On signing the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Stalin actually admitted that it would be hard to explain since they'd spent years "pouring buckets of shit over each other's heads".  And indeed endless buckets of this unselfconsciously self-parodying verbiage poured out of Radio Moscow, Cuba etc. as if, pace Orwell, from a machine.  And it still does from North Korea… and China.

Remember the Chinese ambassador to Canada hectoring us for "Western egotism and white supremacy" and "mocking and trampling the rule of law".  Can we not even hear this language, or understand what we're hearing?  Lu wasn't politely declared unwelcome, let alone ordered to get out as the sniveling lackey of a belligerent, corrupt and totalitarian regime.

Totalitarian is not too strong a word.  Despite decades of economic "reforms" designed to make the lunge for world domination more vigorous, the government in Beijing is murderous, even genocidal (unlike our own), appallingly ambitious in its objectives including thought control and contemptuous in its brazen dishonesty.

It is disquieting the extent to which the Politburo seems to have stuffed Tienanmen down the memory hole.  Perhaps more Chinese know about it privately than they let on when some dopey Western journalist sticks a microphone in their face and says, are you ruled by ruthless lying killers?   Or perhaps not.  But in any case their government knows it happened, isn't sorry, and pours buckets of that stuff Stalin mentioned on the heads of senior American statesmen who tell the truth.

I'm not excusing Trump's vulgarity or carelessness with the truth and with orthography.  It's wrong in principle and it does not help our mission.  But as the Democrats lurch toward impeaching Trump as unfit for the office he holds I rather feebly point out that unfitness for the office is not technically grounds for impeachment and if it were a surprising number of Presidents would have been shown the door.

If Trump is that bad, it shouldn't be hard to beat him in 2020.  But whatever you do, don't go impeaching him as worse than the worst thing ever, then cuddle up to Xi Jinping's ranting assassins.

Photo Credit: The Epoch Times