For Donald Trump I will, however, be making an exception and travelling up to London to join the crowd. His ego is so fragile that he will not like it one bit if there is an enormous crowd whilst he would take a lot of comfort if there were just a couple of folk waving banners and looking eccentric.
Even quite solidly right-wing people that I speak to in the UK find his style distasteful. There is much to dislike in the arrogance, the needy desire to constantly be the centre of attention, the crude treatment of women, the bullying behaviour towards anyone who offers him advice he doesn’t like and the insistence that everything he does is great.
All of that might be enough to get me out on the streets. But what really gets my goat is the fact that he is a genuine reactionary who does everything he can to go back to a false vision of how America used to be and what is really needed is to make rapid changes to our economy and our society before we do irreparable harm to the environment.
We are living in the first truly global economy. That means we have to find a way to develop genuine global management and control systems if we are to stand any chance of guiding the direction of development of a global society. Trump’s answer to that problem is to exploit every fear about the change that he can find and use it to further his own career. It is extremely hard to tell what he truly believes because the only thing that seems to actually matter to him is proving to himself that he is not worthless by acquiring yet more money and power or seducing yet another woman. Before discovering that the next milestone wasn’t enough to cure the feeling of emptiness at the core of his soul.
In so far as it is possible to tell what he genuinely believes it looks as if every one of his policies and attitudes is exactly the opposite of what we need in order to build a decent society.
Trump believes that factual evidence about climate change is a nuisance that has been dreamt up to damage American fossil fuel businesses. Anyone who looks at that evidence knows that we have to get free of that fossilised technology and quickly.
Trump struggles to be comfortable in the company of Angela Merkel or Theresa May because, whatever you think of their politics, they are powerful women. Most decent people want to see more women succeeding and occupying powerful positions. Trump has openly boasted that he can grab women by the pussy and they will like it because he is rich and powerful. He is opposed to allowing women to choose whether or not to have an abortion.
Trump has deliberately abandoned evidence-based politics. He yells about fake news as loudly as he can in the hope that no one will notice that he is only interested in saying what is convenient to him on any given day. Whilst someone is on his team they are described as the best. As soon as they find it impossible to parrot the most obvious of lies they are dumped and viciously attacked. No one who has worked closely with him for any length of time appears to have enjoyed the experience.
Trump’s reaction to a global economy is to tax Chinese and European imports and to adopt the same kind of protectionist policies that produced horrible consequences in the 1930s. He is busy challenging and destroying most of the major international treaties in the hope he can bully the world into remaking them in America’s interests. He gains political strength by promising people that their local factory is going to re-open and the good times are just around the corner. Meanwhile the Chinese are busy investing in future technology so rapidly that the US is going to increasingly struggle to compete. He is therefore guaranteeing that yet more US factories will close.
Trump’s idea of an effective foreign policy is to dump any international agreement that he finds remotely inconvenient and to try and bully his adversary. He likes to take risks. He is happy to turn a blind eye or even to praise murders committed by nations he sees as his allies such as the recent gunning down of protesting Palestinians. He thinks he has the right to inflict financial penalties on European firms that trade with Iran in line with a carefully constructed international agreement. He enjoys dealing with powerful authoritarian leaders such as Putin. He struggles to deal with powerful democratic leaders who dare to contradict his lies such as Trudeau in Canada.
He expects the US legal system to do his bidding and does everything he can to remove its independence whenever it becomes a risk to him. So he threatens to sack the special prosecutor every time it looks as if the evidence that he and his team received campaign help from the Russians is getting too close to home. He appoints far right zealots to positions on the US Supreme court on prime time TV as if he was appointing a new apprentice on his reality TV show.
He whips up hatred of foreigners and immigrants. He lied bigtime to the American people that he could build a wall 2,000 miles long across some of the toughest terrain on the planet. He ignored the fact that one already existed across all but the most difficult and dangerous transport routes. He lied that the Mexicans would pay for the wall. He separated children from their parents and didn’t even bother about keeping records of where he had jailed the children so that his officials are still struggling to unite families weeks after his wife told him his policy was cruel.
Any one of these characteristics would be dangerous in a US President. Put together they represent a perfect storm. In place of the dignity and hope that Obama tried to create he has offered aggression, petty mindedness and an attempt to take America backwards.
I don’t believe that any democratically elected leader of the US government should be refused entry to the UK by the law of the land. I happen to believe in freedom of speech and a sensible level of freedom of movement. Trump believes in restricting both. So I also believe that it is important to let the American people see that Donald Trump is seriously disliked by so many people in Britain and that he could not even safely visit London because of the level of protests he provokes.
We are living in dangerous times with some exceptionally unpleasant politicians trying to exploit fears to gain power. The sight of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people prepared to stand together to resist that and to try and build something better will be very powerful. Joining that crowd seems likely to be a joyous occasion. I’m looking forward to being part of a little bit of fightback against someone seriously nasty.