Elected!: Alfred Muggins Considers Entering American Politics!

23/4/25
   Modest Alfred Muggins saw the ‘success’ of Trump in America and began to think, “If Trump could do it so ‘well’, then maybe even he could get elected. Okay he wasn’t actually an American citizen, by birth or parentage, but if Trump, whose grandfather had come all the way from Germany could do It, and his six wives, all foreign born, as he had understood, each one from an ex Russian or at least ex communist potentate or principality in the east of Europe, could become president in just a couple of generations or so why not he? Indeed Alfred had indeed been to America before, twice now, and he had seen a few touristy places at least, so why shouldn’t he, with his own brand of infallible optimism, arise also to the throne of this incredibly Great place. Where Trump showed the way, surely others might follow. He was far more of an expert in American History, with at least 50 or more years of obsession with all things wild and western, Indian or Amerindian, revolutionary and with a full knowledge of the appalling civil war which once despoiled the place! On top of that he was a truly great expert on American music, and could even play the guitar just a little bit, if a little lazily! (He didn’t know whether Trump could do that, but Alfred assumed if he hadn’t mentioned it, as in blowing his own trumpet, then he probably did not have those particular skills (perhaps pointless? As there were more than enough guitarists to go round in this post rock’n’roll epoch!) 
    Excitedly Alfred went back to his old record collection, filled with the fantasy of imagining himself being elected to be the President of such a powerful nation as the United States of America! He began to look for Alice Cooper’s ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ album, from 1973. There was a great track on there called ‘Elected’, ‘I wanna get elected’!, and the cover was made of snakeskin, with pictures of billion dollar notes in the gatefold sleeve. What a classic, if ever there was one!
    He could not find it of course, but he could find virtually everything he wanted on You Tube. Why did he need to imagine himself as the President of a huge multicultural society like America? The awesome track came on, and he shoved the volume up, after getting rid of unwanted adverts as soon as the Skip sign came up. At that moment he wanted it too; he wanted to be elected. He wanted to be better than Trump. He would be the Greatest President! He would leave Trump far behind. Anyway the real Trump could not possibly carry on this way and still win, flattening the American economy, creating unnecessary shortages and tariff driven price rises, hurting the share values of those multi billionaires , and even millionaires even from among those who backed him with money and support. Once Donald Trump had tanked the economy most of his backers would surely try to push him out again, if their money had given them any say in the matter; even if they didn’t care too much about the fate of the poor deported immigrants and the falsely accused citizen deportees, or the rising numbers of the homeless, the bankrupt, and the many who could no longer afford medical insurance and were losing their medicare and their social security.
     Trump had started pretty well, after supposedly winning a landslide election, amazingly managing to ‘swing’ all the ‘Swing’ States, which were apparently dotted around, particularly in the old rustbelt of America. Trump had promised or perhaps more accurately intimated that he was going to restore the old rustbelt industries, despite the modern fact that many of those various products were now made in many other countries, which had long since caught up the United States, and were somehow producing those products, cars, steel, railway lines etc cheaper, and with cheaper labour than the Americans had been able to supply for many years. How was he going to do it? Well apparently he had a masterplan which involved raising tariffs in order to magically protect American industries and allow them to produce at least for the home market, which was admittedly quite large in America.
    Trump’s victory in all these places had seemed rather fishy even at the time, and even relatively apolitical Mrs Muggins (when it concerned the United (or Disunited?) States, as she said, it was really their business, not hers!) She did however declare that it seemed as if they counted all the votes very fast, a bit too fast! Last time (November 2020), while the Great Donald fumed and let off hot air and threats, and accused his rivals of not being able to count properly it had seemed to take a lot longer, and some votes were recounted due to Trump’s desperate protestations, but it hadn’t won him that election. This time around the votes were speedily counted which made Mrs Muggins suspicious that they might not have done it properly, but the Democrats, ostensible losers, never tried to accuse the votes of being miscounted, even though the swing had seemed unexpected, and suspiciously complete or all over. Alfred himself, like many on social media, thought it highly likely that Trump would have tampered with the vote if he possibly could. That was why he was such a sore loser last time, because he had tried to fix the result and failed. In Alfred’s mind, in all probability, this time gentleman Trump had probably tried to fix the vote and this time succeeded with a little help from his friends, or greatest friend Elon Musk whose starlink computer company had been doing a lot of computerized counting.(? check more on this*)

     Alfred’s first task in the climb to power, if he was really serious about this, would be to decide which Party to join? There were only two big ones apparently in the whole of America, if you actually wanted to stand a chance of winning, (ie being elected President!) or even being in much of a position of influence. And then he would have to work out how to become popular inside whichever Party he chose. It was already beginning to sound like a tough prospect, but if even casino and hotel owner, and reality TV show star Donald Trump could do it, then how difficult could it really be? Alfred was sure some of his own understanding of American History and Economics, his understanding of proper accounting practices, and even his common sense approach to law and rules would surely stand him in good stead. 

30/4/25
    The Democrats had apparently started as the Party of the frontier and the small farmer, had somehow been the Party of the Slave holding South in the civil war, but the 20th century had seen them become the more radical and progressive Party of F.D. Rooseveldt and the Kennedy brothers. Wheras the Republicans had been the banking centralisers, and the slavery abolitionists of Abraham Lincoln. They tended to favour business, and often big business and were not in later years keen to pay high taxes or to spend much , unless it was on the military industrial complex.
23/24 /4/25
    Donald had apparently pursued some very Radical Policies, which seemed rather unusual for Republicans, who were usually very conservative and did not usually like to ‘rock the boat’ very much. All the standard Republican voter over the years wanted to do was to pay as little in taxes as possible, and to stand up to both the Russians, whether or not they were actually communists, and to the ‘Yellow Peril’, whether it was was China (who happened also to still be communists) or Japan (although they had mostly been forgiven for their cruel imperial war expansionism, and more recently for making better cars and machines than the Americans).
30/4/25
    Donald had turned a lot of this traditional Republican belief and practice on its head. For the original Party of abolition he had little concern for racial equality, turning the clock back as quickly as possible to a time before civil rights movement, cancelling Black History Day and remembrance of black military prowess, and cancelling DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives which ensured fairness between races, communities and for people with disabilities within organisations.