Myopic self-indulgence

February 21, 2025

At least Saul Eslake managed a reasonably accurate description of Trump. Otherwise, this dalliance in knee-jerk journalism is perhaps the most condescending, patronising, presumptuous, and vacuous insult I’ve ever read on P & I.

He’s used election results in order to support his apparent political and social myopia, engaging in no analysis whatsoever in order to replace facts with generalities. He excoriates and vilifies a contrived homogeneous mass of humanity in the US with no effort to account for reality: the US population simply doesn’t fit, even generally, into his mischaracterisations.

Instead of addressing the structural faults and failures of the US political system, designed and practised over 250 years to sustain an exploitative capitalist (and, more pertinently, neoliberal capitalist) economy, Eslake jumps to sensationalised conclusions built upon illegitimate premises: the “majority” want “walls erected” to keep out the “foreign.” His assertions don’t hold up to the truth.

I’d have a lot more to say about Eslake’s miserable mischaracterisations and misinformation, but a 200-word limit isn’t nearly sufficient for addressing all his essay’s shortcomings – he and P & I readers might start with reading many past and current writers who are clearly more qualified to write on US politics.