The out­pour­ing of pun­dit­ry, com­ments and edi­to­r­i­al car­toons in the U.S. media and on social net­works, express­ing every­thing from bemuse­ment to crit­i­cism and deri­sion over the coro­na­tion of King Charles III, has led me to pon­der what it is about the Amer­i­can psy­che, or at least that of a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion, that I don’t understand.

Amer­i­cans glo­ry in the rev­o­lu­tion that “freed” them from a monar­chy, yet half the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion appar­ent­ly wants to be over­seen by some­one who sees him­self as omni­scient, omnipo­tent, above the laws of the realm, and self-des­ig­nat­ed as “the king of debt” and “the cho­sen one”.
The pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, as I under­stand the job and title, is sup­posed to be the antithe­sis of a dic­ta­tor. That’s why there’s a two cham­bered Con­gress which “enacts laws that influ­ence the dai­ly lives of all Amer­i­cans and is intend­ed to serve as the voice of the peo­ple” and an inde­pen­dent (well, once upon a time any­way) judi­cia­ry to pro­vide checks and balances.
A com­pe­tent pres­i­dent gov­erns by seek­ing the coun­sel of expe­ri­enced peo­ple unafraid to “speak truth to pow­er”, as opposed to ambi­tious toad­ies, unques­tion­ing loy­al­ists and cam­paign contributors.
The antithe­sis is will­ful­ly ignor­ing the rules and norms that make Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy work, and express­ing nei­ther remorse nor any inten­tion to do any­thing but the same again if re-elected.
In Hol­ly­wood movies, which seem to reflect, or per­haps that’s cre­ate, ele­ments of Amer­i­can cul­ture, a town hall meet­ing invari­ably includes out­raged cit­i­zens con­fronting their puta­tive leaders.
Don­ald Trump’s CNN “Town Hall” was a litany of false­hoods and mis­lead­ing state­ments. He showed a bare­ly pass­ing acquain­tance with  real­i­ty, but only the mod­er­a­tor noticed.
At the time of writ­ing, an ABC-Wash­ing­ton Post poll gave Trump a six point lead in a hypo­thet­i­cal match-up with Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.
That on its own goes some way to rein­forc­ing the dic­tum of Hitler’s pro­pa­gan­dist Joseph Goebbels: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeat­ing it, peo­ple will even­tu­al­ly come to believe it”. (He was, inci­den­tal­ly, para­phras­ing a line from the Nazi leader’s infa­mous tome “Mein Kampf”.)
On a less evil but still egre­gious lev­el, it’s also jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the charge that a minor issue head­lined enough becomes a major talk­ing point.

           BLAME IT ON THE MEDIA (FOR REAL)

In the same poll that gave Trump the “points lead”, two-thirds of those ques­tioned thought he would be more phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly fit for the pres­i­den­cy at 76, than Biden would be at 80.
The near-con­stant bar­rage of opin­ions, dis­par­age­ment and angst over Joe Biden’s age and cog­ni­tive fit­ness bare­ly, if at all, shows esteem for the accu­mu­lat­ed wis­dom he brings to the job.
Much is made of  “Amer­i­can tra­di­tions” that are a few hun­dred years old, but there seems to be lit­tle respect for hard-won experience.
Tax­onomies like age ought to fit well down in news sto­ries and  com­men­tary about a politician’s fit­ness for office. Instead, char­ac­ter, cred­i­bil­i­ty  and expe­ri­ence are the also-rans, the jour­nal­is­tic sin of “bury­ing the lede”.
Jour­nal­ists ought to be able to dis­tin­guish between what mat­ters and what politi­cians want them to high­light. Regur­gi­tat­ing talk­ing points with­out coun­ter­point, is not  pay­ing obei­sance to the alleged­ly sacred tenets of “bal­ance” or “objec­tiv­i­ty”, it’s a lazy dis­ser­vice to read­ers and viewers.
So what if the pres­i­dent occa­sion­al­ly stum­bles over words, air­plane steps or pro­nun­ci­a­tions? Every­one does some­thing sim­i­lar at some time or anoth­er. Note it and move on.
Infal­li­bil­i­ty is the pre­serve of despots, dic­ta­tors and popes.
Biden’s speech­es, how­ev­er less-than-flour­ish­ing­ly deliv­ered, make sense, as opposed to Trump’s  as-often-as-not inchoate and self-pro­mot­ing ramblings.

                       WHICH IS MORE ADMIRABLE?

In her response speech to Biden’s last State of the Union address, Gov. Sarah Huck­abee Sanders of Arkansas not­ed that she’s half Biden’s age. It would be more to the point if, as a poten­tial pres­i­den­tial hope­ful her­self, she’d been able to note that their two ages com­bined added up to her IQ. Maybe it does, but based on her record so far, it seems like­ly hers may fall some­where clos­er to an aver­age of the two.
Even a pass­ing con­ver­sance with his­to­ry would have informed her of the con­tri­bu­tions of octo­ge­nar­i­an leaders in brit­tle situations.
It was 82-year old Ben­jamin Franklin who brought con­sen­sus at the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion. Kon­rad Ade­nauer was 87 when he rebuilt nation­al spir­it and  glob­al trust for post-war Ger­many. The French looked to Charles de Gaulle to uni­fy their nation when he was 80, and  Averell Har­ri­man, often not­ed as one of America’s great­est diplo­mats, advised pres­i­dents until he was 94.
King Charles’ moth­er reigned until she was 97. The world-wide out­pour­ing of respect when she died, still serv­ing, was earned by car­ry­ing out her duties in the man­ner and to the degree the job, and insti­tu­tion of the monar­chy, demand­ed, and as Charles pledged to do.
What puz­zles me is why that would be seen as some­thing to be derid­ed or triv­i­alised, rather than admired and emulated.

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