John Bird: Time for some new progressives to ride into the frame

I’ve finished my book. It awaits a professional eye. I wait for judgment, before it proceeds, or doesn’t, to a publisher. The first part was praised, the second part may be or may not be.

When I started 9/11 had just happened. That was a major change in the world. I finished, yes, on the 20th of January, the day of the 45th’s inauguration. That might well prove to be as big a shift as 9/11.

I’ve stuck in a bit about Brexit and Trump, but as a light scattering like sugar on a doughnut. I thought I ought to. But the major part of the work is as a history book.

The finest part of the book, or the most enjoyable part, was describing the winter of 1963. I was 17 and in an institution for delinquents. The snow was the worst for centuries. I was on the all-day snow gang for months. I could have gone off to another job. But I was convinced I wanted to be clearing what I was telling everyone was “God’s Snow”.

This was a kind of rite of passage moment. I became resolute and threw off a disdain for labour, which I had developed watching my father labour himself into the ground. There was no way I was going to do the same.

Let’s hope that the 45th remembers what’s it like to be an immigrant, what with his mum being Scottish and a grandfather German

But here I was clearing the snow and watching it come in blizzards again as soon as the roads were clear. And the more the snow came the more ‘real’ I felt.

Interestingly, the same day I finished my book and the 45th was inaugurated, I jumped on my children’s Segway for the first time. A 70-year-old man on a Segway for the first time might seem a courting of disaster. But after a few minutes of assistance I was off. And by the end of that fateful day in world history – as it may prove to be – I was Segwaying away.

And don’t believe that standing on a Segway is a laze. You utilise parts of your feet, back, legs and buttocks that may get forgotten about in everyday life. And your balance! That is immediately improved.

But as well you know, the biggest bit of the 20th of January was not me sending my history book away to my agent or learning to Segway. It was Washington that held us all. And the 45th being sworn in, and the world seeming to gasp in horror and fear; and rage. What does the strangest of incumbents of high office do with the future for us all?

When Nixon, the 37th, and Reagan, the 40th, came in there was similar fears. But on reflection they seem like social progressives compared to the menu the 45th has promised the world.

Are there any indications that the 45th might morph into something more anodyne like the ‘professionals’ that previously offered themselves for the job? Or is this one really going to break the mould?

Bear in mind that the ‘professionals’ who have had the job mainly for decades, soaked as they are in office and political ambition, do seem to bring multiple wars in their train; and the most recent ‘progressive professionals’ have seen the destruction of American communities with the exportation of US jobs.

When Tennessee lost its big denim factories, for instance, to the Far East, this was not because some casino-owning, hotel-owning dude had ordered it so. That was under the progressive Clinton administration, with its liberalising of world trade: globalisation.

We must hold our breath, admittedly, but we must also hope that different ‘professional progressives’ grow out of this situation. Not the usual suspects who seem as tied to Wall Street and international capital as supposed react-ionaries who have held the highest office.

Could you imagine the 45th on a Segway? Does he have the balance and the knees and buttocks for it? He is, after all, exactly the same age as me. That White House is a pretty big place and a Segway would cut down walking time.

I will not though be Twittering the 45th that he gets on a Segway. He has a more serious task. He has to convince the world that all of those bestial promises were just to get into power. And that, like what progressives promise, it was and is only a load of election hot wind.

Let’s hope therefore that he was lying about the wall, for instance; stopping Mexicans returning to the lands that they were evicted from in the 19th century. And that Islam will not be further vilified to keep with an idea of the hatred of ‘the Other’. Let’s hope that the 45th remembers what’s it like to be an immigrant, what with his mum being Scottish and a grandfather German.

And let us hope that we keep our cool and learn to engage in politics that is not the usual jumble of satire, piss-taking and outraged resignation. This might be our opportunity to get real.