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You’ll struggle to find reference to it in the British press but something very significant has just happened in America. An event that clears the air in the Democratic party. That perhaps, even, changes the game.
On a freezing January night in Chicago – while a polar vortex was sucking degrees away from the normal winter cold – an actor called Justin Smollett was walking home from a Subway sandwich shop.
Smollett is black and gay and, in America, quite famous: he stars in a TV hip-hop drama called Empire. He hates Donald Trump and often says so.
What happened next made him even more famous. Smollett was beaten up by two men wearing Donald Trump ‘Make America Great Again’ hats. “This is MAGA country,” they screamed. Then they poured bleach over him and put a rope around his neck. And ran off.
Smollett went home, called the police, issued a statement, and the machine took over.
First, the media machine. Relatively mild stuff from the Washington Post: “To many, the Smollett incident — and the political nature of the assault — is yet another reminder for many black gay Americans that this president’s vision of a ‘great America’ does not appear to include them.”
Then it really got going. Jamil Smith of Rolling Stone tweeted, “The brutal attack on him in Chicago appears to be yet another example not just of further moral decay, but of the brand of terrorism that still doesn’t seem to spark enough response by Americans.”
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SubscribeAbsolutely brilliant perspective on the present viewed as history. The Washington foreign policy wonks are no more able to to perceive the futility and rot of their messianic mission of spreading liberalism to the world by force, than economic policy wonks are to understand how unflinching free trade promotion has hollowed out the US economy. I hope Roussinos’s voice is heard widely.