© Val Guest Productions / Pax Films / British Lion Films
In my previous blog-post, I cited the ending of the apocalyptic 1961 sci-fi film The Day the Earth Caught Fire, where we’re inside a newspaper office and see that two versions of the next day’s front page have been prepared. One page’s headline announces WORLD SAVED. The other announces WORLD DOOMED. Which headline, I wondered, would be appropriate after the US presidential election on November 5th?
Well, the results are in. And it’s…
© Val Guest Productions / Pax Films / British Lion Films
I think I’ll stay away from the news for the next week or so, as it’s going to be full of the sights and sounds of the very worst people on the planet popping open the champagne and jeering and crowing about Trump’s win – from despots and corrupt authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Kim Jong Un, Victor Orban and Aleksandr Lukashenko to billionaires who believe (probably rightly, given the evidence now) that democracy is something that can be bought and sold in the quest for profits, like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Charles Koch, Rupert Murdoch, Paul Marshall and all the other media tycoons, hedge-fund moguls, oligarchs, oil barons and would-be tech overlords.
Despite a majority of British people hating Trump’s guts, Britain’s press and social media will be particularly infested with sycophants drooling and slobbering over the orange turd’s victory. These range from online grifters who make their money whipping gullible people into frenzies of paranoia and hatred, such as Andrew Tate, Russell Brand, Neil Oliver, Tommy Robinson and failed nepo-baby thespian Laurence Fox; to the preening hacks who pen vitriol for the country’s right and far-right-wing publications, like Brendan O’Neill, Alison Pearson, Douglas Murray, Piers Morgan and Isabel Oakeshott; and to its most discredited, unsavoury and opportunistic politicians, such as Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. So, I’ll avoid that lot too for a while. I don’t want to be put off my food.
Many hideous people are no doubt licking their lips at the prospect of the dystopian years ahead, thinking about what they can do as part of the Trump bandwagon and how they can line their pockets from it. I’m sure that includes all those I’ve mentioned above.
Finally, I now find myself thinking of the ending of another 1960s sci-fi film, that of Franklin J. Schaffner’s Planet of the Apes (1968).
© APJAC Productions / 20th Century Fox
Not only does this conclude with Charlton Heston discovering the Statue of Liberty buried up to her chest in sand – indicating that the USA, plus the rest of human civilisation, are now extinct and lie hidden under millions of tons of sediment – but it shows Heston having a meltdown in front of this haunting and pitiful spectacle. “You maniacs!” he rages. “You blew it up! Damn you! Goddamn you all to hell!”
He could have been referring to those millions of Americans who thought it was a good idea to vote Donald Trump back into office the other day.
© APJAC Productions / 20th Century Fox