Of the various t-shirts I've bought over the years, there's one that I feel a special and perverse affection for. It bears the colors of the U.S. flag and proclaims, "Deplorable and proud of it." Deplorable and proud of it.
He's referring to what candidate Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters during the 2016 election campaign. Since then, devotees of the orange monster have sported the insult as a badge of honor. Today, I intend to expand on the topic and name nine of the most deplorable characters, organizations, or phenomena of the year 2023.
First, Mrs. Clinton got it right: Trump voters still make up the largest group of deplorables (70 million or more) in the Western world. Given the fact that today Trump faces 91 criminal charges but that he weighs--or is due to--it is very possible that he will be re-elected president, more adjectives should be added, for example those offered by the RAE as synonyms for "deplorable": painful, nefarious or abhorrent.
Second, Putin. (I exclude from the list those who will vote for him in the Russian elections he will win in March because they are victims of a general democratic lobotomy.)
Third, Milei? No. It has become a cliché in the international press, especially the left-leaning one, to identify the new Argentine president as an "ultra-rightist" à la Mussolini, or as "the Trump of the South."
Error. He may be a weird guy who converses with his dead dog through a medium, and such, but to date there is nothing to indicate that he is opposed to democracy. Rather, his track record shows that he is a feverish believer in freedom of expression. Just as important at this delicate moment in Argentine history, the big and notable difference with Trump is that Milei, mistaken or not, sincerely wishes the best for his country. For Trump, the world begins and ends with his monumental crystal ego.
Fourth, and yes, utterly deplorable: the Iranian regime. It supplies weapons to Russia, to bloodthirsty Syria, to Hamas terrorists and to Yemen's fanatical Houthis who today launch missiles at merchant ships in the Red Sea. According to the UN, Iran has executed at least 550 of its citizens this year, including 21 women, representatives of the sector to whose struggle the Shiite theocracy has responded with a cruel repression.
Fifth, Israel. It will be a democracy surrounded by tyrannies, but in war it plays by the rules of the neighborhood. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorizes the extermination of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, children and women, as if he were spraying insects. Just like the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, against villages occupied by his enemies in a civil war that has lasted since 2011, or Saudi Arabia, whose bombings in Yemen have caused the death of 350,000 civilians since 2014, many of them collateral victims of disease or famine, as is the case in Gaza today.
Sixth, Joseph Biden's policy toward Israel. The U.S. president pleads with Netanyahu to stop the killings but does not threaten to cut off the flow of weapons. If, say, Iran were killing Israelis on the same scale that Israel is killing Palestinians today, it would send the fleet to burn Tehran. Biden's double mistake is that many members of his Democratic party have mobilized in favor of the Palestinians, contributing to Trump's gains in election polls.
Seventh, the useful idiots who support the Russians in Ukraine. They come from both the puerile left and the demagogic right, and both have as their guru a seemingly venerable Chicago professor of international politics named John Mearsheimer, a star of Russian television. Mearsheimer, also popular on YouTube, maintains that NATO is to blame for the half a million dead, maimed or injured on both sides since the start of hostilities in February 2022.
This month he went further, saying that "Putin didn't want to go to war." Like Hitler, who didn't want to go to war in Europe either. He wanted the Russians to surrender, for example, without putting up any resistance to their invading troops.
Eighth, and moving from tragedy to comedy, the absurd excesses of the woke movement, or what some call "the culture of offense." Of American origin, but with a growing global impact, wokeism consists of discovering insults or grievances where there are none, of always being alert for the opportunity to exclaim "Uuuuuh! Look what he said! To the stake with him!" Or with books deemed harmful. To choose one example among thousands, the Bible has been removed from several schools in Texas due to its "sexual content, violence, human sacrifice, misogyny and homophobia," according to a Dallas newspaper.
Ninth, the intrusion of this frivolous habit of censorship in the film and series industry, the main cultural references of our time. Social media burns when a non-Jewish actress plays a Jewish character, when a straight actor plays a homosexual, or a trans person.
The same people who are offended by these supposed impostures say nothing, on the other hand, when a woman plays Hamlet, or a black actress plays the part of an English duchess of the eighteenth century. To the stupidity, therefore, is added the confusion, perhaps never more so than with a 'Snow White' movie that Disney is shooting right now in which the seven dwarfs are played by seven men who are not.
Which leads me to think, finally, that I should reconsider having placed the original deplorables, the Trumpists, at the top of my list. They are very motivated by the rejection of the new progressive puritanism. Perhaps I have more in common with them than I would like to believe.