2020 us election

The thing we most need to understand right now is how you deprogram people who have been in a cult. By cult, I mean a group of people living out an imaginary world view created by a charismatic leader. These things sometimes end with the guru hopping on a private plane to escape the authorities; others end in mass suicide; still others go up in literal smoke, as David Koresh did, or sometimes they collapse in a welter of claims of abuse and corruption. But when the cult is political, and when the guru is the sitting president of the United States, it all gets a little messier. That’s what the core of the Trump movement is. Not all Trump voters, by any means. But the core: a cult. And these lost souls will believe anything and everything the leader says.

Home The Commons voted by 291 votes to 78 for new coronavirus regulations putting 55 million people in England into the restrictive Tier 3 or the little less restrictive Tier 2, apart from the 700,000 or so folk of Cornwall, the Isle of Wight and the Scilly Isles. There were 55 Tory rebels, whom the government had attempted to placate by publishing a 48-page dossier, generally regarded as thin stuff. There would, they were also assured, be a review on 16 December of the areas put into tiers. ‘We do want to be as granular as possible,’ Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, told the Commons encouragingly. Labour let the regulations go through by abstaining, though 15 Labour MPs voted against. Wales prohibited pubs from selling strong drink and made them close at 6 p.m.

Donald Trump may be a narcissist, but since he is not mentally ill in the technical sense, he is not a pathological one. Aristotle would have seen him as entirely normal — a man driven by rage that the world does not see things his way. For Aristotle, a man becomes angry because of what has been, or will be, done to him. According to Aristotle, Trump’s current feelings would be that he has been belittled and humiliated in an election in which he was by far Joe Biden’s superior. The consequence of that, as Aristotle says, is anger: anger that Biden — whom Trump sees as e.g. ‘inferior, of no account, not fit to rule, disrespectful, forgetful of his name (!)’ (Aristotle) — has defeated him and leaves Trump, the great winner, a loser.

Home Pfizer and BioNTech announced a vaccine against Covid-19 of 90 per cent efficacy from two injections three weeks apart. It was not known if it prevented transmission of the virus. The vaccine has to be stored at an ultra-low temperature of minus 80˚C. In July, the British government had bought 40 million doses, enough for a third of the population, with ten million available by the end of the year (along with access to five other vaccine candidates, totalling 340 million doses in all). The army and police planned vaccination centres. Shares in air transport went up; shares in Zoom went down. Asked whether we could say with confidence that life should be returning to normal by spring, Sir John Bell, the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, said: ‘Yes, yes, yes.

Home The government imposed a lockdown on England to last until 2 December. On television, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, looking unhappy, said of Christmas: ‘It’s my sincere hope and belief that by taking tough action now we can allow families across the country to be together.’ People would have to stay at home except for work that couldn’t be done there. The furlough scheme, due to have expired at the end of October, was extended for the new lockdown period. Exercise and recreation outdoors were allowed. Households might not mix indoors or even meet one person in a private garden. Schools and universities were to stay open.