讨川普檄 | 英国前驻美记者如是说
A letter to my American friends: when did the dream die?
It is difficult for Americans to watch the presidential parody that is Donald Trump with anything approaching equanimity. But it is also hard for non-Americans – long-time friends and admirers of the United States – who look on helplessly from afar. Reactions range from amazement and amusement to shock and dismay. How has this frightening travesty come about? What does it mean for the America we love? And what does it portend for a world accustomed to sensible, reliable, rational American leadership?
美国人难以坦然地观看对唐纳德·特朗普总统的恶搞。万里之外的非美国人，合众国长期的朋友和仰慕者，即便是无可奈何地远观，也不并容易。有人惊奇，有人消遣，有人错愕，有人气馁。这种可怕的戏仿从何而起呢？它对我们热爱的美国又意味着什么？对明智、可靠和理性的美国领导力习以为常的世界，这又预示着什么？
Every country has its political mavericks and clowns. But to put a shadow figure like Trump, a profoundly ignorant, self-obsessed narcissist lacking any discernible moral compass, in charge of the nation’s affairs looks like an act of collective madness.
每个国家都有政治异端和小丑。可让特朗普这么一个驴皮影主管国家事务，看起来更像是集体疯癫，他彻头彻尾地无知自负，自我陶醉，看不出有一丁点道德标准。
Seven months after he took office, the situation has not “normalised”. On the contrary, it grows more abnormal by the day. Just look at Trump’s aberrant press conference performance on Tuesday when, breaking his word of the previous day, he deliberately re-opened America’s most sensitive wound – racial division – and picked at the Charlottesville scabs until the blood gushed anew.
他就职七个月了，局势还未“归常”，反倒日益反常。看看特朗普在上周二新闻发布会上的奇葩表演，他出尔反尔，故意揭开美国最敏感的创口——种族分裂，撬开夏洛茨维尔的伤痂，让鲜血再次汩汩冒出来。
This reckless divisiveness, this shameless moral ambiguity, this historical know-nothingness, this thinly-disguised bigotry – these are not the qualities one expects of an American president. This is not leadership. This is not change. This is not greatness renewed. This unworthy man, and the far-right ghouls who cling to him, set a dreadful example for the rest of the world, from the very country that is deemed by many to be the ultimate symbol of justice, liberty and democratic governance.
这种粗暴的撕裂，这种无耻的道德暧昧，这种对历史的无知，这种不加掩饰的偏执——这些都不是人们眼中一个美国总统该有的素质。这压根算不上领导。这压根算不上变革。这压根算不上再次伟大。这个卑劣的家伙同依附于他的极右翼食尸鬼，给全世界树立了丑陋的榜样，亏了许多人还把他那个国家是做正义、自由和民主治理的终极象征。
The US is better than this.
美国不应如此。
It was a warm, sunny morning in Washington DC in the spring of 1992 when I finally took America to my heart. On the South Lawn of the White House, the then US president, George HW Bush, was busy extolling the virtues of American fitness.
Not American fitness to rule, or fitness to serve, or American fitness to lead the world. Bush, with his wife Barbara at his side, was talking about the need to improve and safeguard the physical and mental health of every American citizen.
1992年春，华盛顿特区，那是一个阳光灿烂的早上，暖洋洋的，我总算是喜欢上了美国。在白宫南草坪，时任美国总统乔治·赫伯特·沃克·布什忙着赞颂美国的健康，不是美国的统治健康，不是履职的健康，也不是美国健康地领导世界。布什和身旁的妻子芭芭拉，谈论的是有必要改善和保护每个美国公民的身体和精神健康。
To help make his point, Bush had invited Arnold Schwarzenegger, the future California governor, former Terminator and chairman of the President’s Fitness Council, to perform some exemplary press-ups. It was the launch of what he dubbed the “Great American Workout”. Fitness must be a part of each American’s day, he declared. “We need balanced and nutritional diet. And we’ve got to avoid tobacco and drug use, avoid excessive alcohol use. And fitness really can enrich the human mind and body by lowering stress and blood pressure and cholesterol.”
为实现目的，布什邀请未来的加州州长、曾经的“终结者”、总统健身委员会主席阿诺德·施瓦辛格演示了几个标准俯卧撑。他将启动的项目称作“伟大的美国锻炼”。他宣布，健身必须成为每个美国人的日常生活。“我们需要平衡的、有营养的饮食。我们要戒烟，不要吸毒，不要过度酗酒。健身可以减压、降低血压和胆固醇，有利于身心健康。”
For a watching English reporter, deeply imbued with the cynicism of political life, Bush’s paternalistic behaviour seemed extraordinary – and revelatory. Here was the president of the United States, the most powerful man on the planet, fretting about the bodily habits of his fellow citizens. And he really seemed to care.
作为一个在场的英国记者，我一直对政治生活从不感冒，可布什家长式的行为看起来非同寻常，也颇有启发性。美利坚合众国总统，这个星球上最有权势的人，为同胞的健身习惯操心，看起来他真的在操心。
It was impossible to imagine a British prime minister, never mind the Queen, behaving in similarly plebeian fashion (this was the pre-Blair era). Such a display would be deemed embarrassing, foolish, undignified. But Bush’s perspiring audience lapped it up. What other country, I thought, and what other national leader would carry on in this unpretentious way? It was entirely charming, and I was charmed.
很难想象英国首相，更别提女王，也能表现得像平民一样（当时可是前布莱尔时代）。这么做会被认为尴尬，愚蠢，有失尊严，可布什流着汗的听众欣然接受。我想，还有哪个国家，哪位国家领导人会如此平易近人呢？太有魅力了，我被迷倒了。
Yet Bush’s actions were instructive in other, more presidentially symbolic ways. They spoke to his sense of a free people joined together in a voluntary, mutually supportive union. For him, “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”, to quote the Pledge of Allegiance, was no trite slogan. It was a living, vital principle.
不止如此，布什的作为另有教益。作为总统，这更具象征性。他的所作所为传达了他的想法，即自由的人民自愿互助地联合起来。对他而言，“上帝之国，不容分裂，所有人拥有自由和公正”，效忠誓言中的话，绝非陈腐的口号，那是活生生且至关重要的准则。
It was a vision of leadership from a man who once admitted he struggled with the “vision thing”. And it came from the same, heartfelt place that produced, in his speech to the Republican convention in 1988, Bush’s famous plea for the free peoples of the American Republic to show compassion, tolerance and “reliable love” for each other. “Some would say it’s soft and insufficiently tough to care about these things. But where is it written that we must act as if we do not care, as if we are not moved? Well I am moved. I want a kinder, and gentler nation.”
一个承认自己看不到“虚幻的远见”的男人，恰恰体现出领导者的远见。1988年共和党大会上的著名演讲中，就在这个暖心的地方，布什请求美利坚共和国的自由人民相互同情，相互宽容，相互爱戴。“有人说，关心这些事太柔情了，不够强硬。可哪里写着我们必须表现得满不在乎，不为所动？反正我是被感动了。我想要一个更加善良和温和的国家。”
译注：在总统任期内，有人试图将他的立场与前任总统里根相提并论时，他曾用嘲笑的口吻说：“那是虚幻的东西”。
What has happened, 25 years after that sunlit day on the South Lawn, to the America I came to love? Where did the kinder, gentler vision go? Nobody is pretending for a moment that the Bush Sr era was some ideal, halcyon age. The de-industrialisation of the midwest was already well advanced. Economic dislocation, lost jobs, globalisation, international competition and disorientating, unsettling social and cultural shifts were part of the daily conversation.
南草坪上那个阳光日子的25年后，我爱上的美国发生了什么呢？那个更加善良和温和的愿景去哪儿了呢？没人曾一瞬间假装相信，老布什时期是某个理想和美好的时代。当时，中西部去工业化已大幅推进。经济紊乱、失业、全球化、国际竞争与失序、令人不安的社会和文化转型，这些都是日常的话题。
Bush was forced to cut short his South Lawn exercises that day to deal with rioting in Los Angeles following the Rodney King beating trial verdict. Racial prejudice was a destructively pervasive issue then, too, as the Anita Hill and Judge Clarence Thomas controversies demonstrated.
布什当天被迫停止在南草坪上锻炼，去处理洛杉矶暴乱，此前黑人罗德尼·金遭警方殴打一案做出了判决。种族偏见当时同样俯拾皆是，且破坏力强，有安妮塔·希尔和克拉伦斯·托马斯诉讼案为证。
译注：1991年3月3日，因超速被洛杉矶警方追逐，被截停后拒捕袭警，遭到警方用警棍暴力制服。1992年，法院判决殴打罗德尼·金的四名白人警察无罪，引发1992年洛杉矶暴动。托马斯1991年被老布什总统提名为最高法院大法官，同时被他在教育部的前助理安妮塔·希尔指控他性骚扰。在听证过程中，托马斯否认那些指控，得到参议院52-48票批准为大法官。那一听证过程被拍成HBO电视电影“Confirmation”。
All the same, the contrast with today is striking. The many disruptive, alarming and increasingly deplorable changes in America’s attitude, both to the world and to itself, that are now a daily feature of the Trump era seem to represent a fundamental shift away from what went before.
即便如此，与今天的对比也是明显的。美国对世界和对自己的态度发生了具有破坏性的、令人惊诧的和越来越可悲的诸多变化，这是特朗普时代的家常便饭，与过去相比，这看起来代表了一种根本性的转变。
Did something break along the way? Did the dream die? America’s friends would dearly like to know. The compassionate, caring nation of Bush’s imagining, the “shining city on a hill” lauded by Ronald Reagan, the land of equality, freedom and opportunity that Abraham Lincoln fought for, Franklin Roosevelt worked for, and JFK died for: where is it now? Has it had its day?
究竟哪里出错了呢？梦想已死吗？美国的朋友们很想知道。布什设想中那个充满爱心、相互关心的国家，罗纳德·里根赞美的“山巅上的光辉之城”，亚伯拉罕·林肯为之奋斗、JF·肯尼迪为之献身的平等、自由和机会之国，今何在？好景不再了吗？
译注：“山巅上的光辉之城”语出《马太福音》：“你们是世上的光。城造在山上是不能隐藏的。”
Alexis de Tocqueville, that famous student of American democracy, once wrote: “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” Under Trump, for whom goodness, truth and generosity of heart appear wholly alien concepts, American greatness is under existential threat. Channelling its president, the country that Lincoln described in 1862 as “the last best hope of earth” risks becoming the narcissist nation – the earth’s selfish, self-obsessed nemesis, and its very own worst enemy.
美国民主的著名学生亚历西斯·德·托克维尔曾经写道：“美国伟大，因为她善好。如果美国不好了，美国就不再伟大。”特朗普治下，美国伟大面临着存在的威胁，对他而言，善好、真理和大度全然是陌生的概念。摊上这么一位总统，林肯在1862年描述的“地球上最后一个最美的希望”之国度，可能变成自恋之国，成为地球上自私自利和自我陶醉的祸害，成为自己最凶恶的敌人。
As every traveller knows, examining one’s own country through the eyes of others, looking in from the outside, is an instructive if not always comfortable experience.
Assuming the foreign observer is neither unreasonably enamoured nor hostile, the diagnostic picture that emerges can change the way citizens regard themselves and their nation.
每个旅行者都知道，通过他人之眼审视自己的国家，从墙外看墙内，那是有益的，尽管未必令人舒服。假设外国观察者既非过分迷恋，又非秉持敌意，他的诊断可以改变公民看待自己和国家的方式。
The current American picture is un-nerving. Take the White House, that most visible, global symbol of American power. Since taking office in January, Trump has turned the Oval Office into a propaganda unit promulgating arbitrary executive orders, inflammatory statements and dangerous, uninformed policy reversals.
当下对美国的诊断令人担忧。以白宫为例，白宫是美国权力最显见、最国际化的象征。特朗普自一月就职以来，将椭圆办公室变成一个宣传机关，鼓吹他武断的行政令、煽动性声明和危险、突如其来的政策翻转。
The White House briefing room, a vital source of factual information on US domestic and foreign policy, became a theatre of the absurd. White House staff, seen as vital in assisting and guiding a greenhorn president, turned out, in many instances, to be more amateurish than their boss. Many have been fired. Many more should be. And Trump himself purposefully devalued the White House as the nerve centre of American government, preferring to tap out ill-considered Tweets from his luxury properties in New York, New Jersey and Florida. Trump recently called the White House “a dump”.
白宫吹风室——美国内政外交事实性消息的关键来源，倒成了荒谬者表演的舞台。对协助和辅助新手总统至关重要的白宫官员，在许多情况下比他们的老板还业余。许多人都被炒了，还有更多人会被炒。特朗普本人坚决贬低白宫作为美国政府神经中枢的价值，他更喜欢在纽约、新泽西和佛罗里达的豪宅中推送不着四六的推文。特朗普最近把白宫称作“一个垃圾场”。
For outsiders, these changes are bewildering. But other Trump moves are seen as more seriously disruptive, introducing unwelcome elements of unpredictability and arbitrariness. His disdain for the normal processes of government extends to a hollowed-out State Department, now facing punitive staffing cuts and a loss of influence; to the Pentagon and the intelligence community, whose judgments and actions he openly disputes, as on Russia and Afghanistan; and to the Justice Department and FBI, whose leaders he has abused and willfully obstructed.
在外人看来，这些变化让人感到困惑。可特朗普另外一些举动，破坏力更加严重，他难以预料、恣意而为，这些做法实在令人失望。他对政府正常程序的藐视拓展到被掏空的国务院，国务院正面临着惩罚性减员，影响力流失；拓展到五角大楼和情报部门，他公开反驳前者在俄国和阿富汗问题上的判断及行动；拓展到司法部和联邦调查局，他辱骂并蓄意妨碍他们的领导人。
Trump’s unceasing conflict with sections of the American media raise real questions about his understanding and commitment to constitutional guarantees of a free press – or at least that’s how it appears. And the support his attacks receive from partial, rightwing outlets such as Fox News and Breitbart, plus official attempts to target anti-Trump websites and activists, pose further disturbing questions about adherence to basic legal rights in a country that made human rights a key pillar of its global policy.
特朗普与美国各个媒体无休无止的冲突，让人怀疑他是否明白并致力于保护宪法对新闻自由的保障，甚至表面的客气都没有。支持他发起攻击的是持有偏见的右翼媒体，如福克斯新闻和布赖特巴特新闻网，他还攻击反特朗普网站和活动人士，这进一步构成令人不安的问题：在一个将人权视为其国际政策基石的国家，基本的合法权利能否得到保护。
Yet the refusal of many in the Republican party to stand up to Trump, and the overall failure of Congress, so far at least, to present a united front on the most contentious issues has also been truly shocking. Ruling party sycophancy and oppositional weakness around an authoritarian leader is to be expected in immature or struggling democracies. Malaysia, Rwanda, Egypt and South Africa come to mind. But the US is not Venezuela. Or are similarities growing?
可共和党内许多人拒绝抵抗特朗普，至少迄今为止，国会在最具争议的问题上组成联合阵线彻底失败，这同样让人震惊。有一个独裁领导人，加之执政党溜须拍马，反对党虚弱无为，这会出现在一个不成熟或困难重重的民主国家中。你能想到的是马来西亚、卢旺达、埃及和南非。但美国并非委内瑞拉。还是两者越来越相似了？
Things may be slowly changing. Republican criticism of Trump over Charlottesville, including from Bush Sr, has been scathing. But the world now waits to see if the most egregious charge levelled against the president and his advisers – that they connived with a foreign power, namely Russia, to fix last year’s election – will be thoroughly investigated. All in all, America’s famed governance system of checks and balances, long touted as a model for others, is being tested in front of a global audience as never before. And not since the Civil War has there been such widespread doubt about its resilience.
事情可能在慢慢起变化。在夏洛茨维尔问题上，共和党对特朗普的批评很尖锐，其中包括老布什。但世界现在翘首以待，想看看对总统和其顾问最严重的指控，即他们与外国势力俄罗斯合谋操纵去年大选，是否会遭到彻查。总而言之，美国大名鼎鼎的制衡体系，一直被他国捧为典范，如今史无前例地在全球观众面前经受考验，美国内战以来，从未出现对这一体系的韧性如此广泛的质疑。
Viewed from Europe, Africa or Asia, Trump’s overall policy approach to international issues seems to be: take a bad situation and make it worse. Ignorance, intemperance, ego and braggadocio are the policy’s main features. Confusion and dangerous confrontation are its principal results.
从欧洲、非洲或亚洲角度看，特朗普在国际问题上的整体对策貌似是让糟糕的态势进一步恶化。无知、过激、自利、自夸是其主要特征。混乱和危险的对抗是其主要结果。
Trump has managed, in a few short months, to raise tensions on the Korean peninsula to the point of all-out war. In what is becoming a familiar pattern for watching governments, he has ignored the advice of allies, defied foes, ramped up the rhetoric, issued dire threats of military action – but failed to come up with a plan.
短短几个月中，特朗普成功恶化了朝鲜半岛紧张局势，两国濒临全面开战。用人们平时评价政府的模式观之，他无视盟友的建议，藐视敌手，大放厥词，威胁动武，偏偏就没有一个计划。
Trump’s approach, vacuous and dangerous in equal measure, has been particularly unhelpful in Israel-Palestine. Trump promised to achieve the historic peace deal that has eluded all his predecessors. He massively raised expectations, and boasted prematurely of his success. But there was no strategy and no new ideas. He put his son-in-law in charge, a man with no experience of diplomacy or peacemaking. He all but ignored one side of the problem: the Palestinians.
特朗普的路子空洞且危险，尤其无助于解决以色列和巴勒斯坦问题。特朗普承诺达成前任都未实现的历史性和平协议。他画了个大饼，贸然夸口自己取得成功，却压根无战略可言，也没有新的头绪。他让毫无外交或维和经验的女婿负责此事，唯独忽略了问题的另一边：巴勒斯坦人。
He stoked up regional tensions by encouraging Israel and Saudi Arabia in their enmity towards Iran. Then he walked away. Trump’s hostile attitude to Tehran, the loose talk of regime change, and his apparent determination to scrap the landmark 2015 nuclear deal are deeply worrying for America’s European allies. His attitude seems wilfully destructive of years of effort to build bridges with Iran, and not based on any sound evidence of Iranian bad faith.
他怂恿以色列和沙特阿拉伯与伊朗为敌，激化了地区局势，然后拍拍屁股走人了。特朗普对伊朗政府抱着敌对态度，信口开河说要推翻伊朗政体，显然铁了心要撕毁2015年达成的里程碑式的核协议，这些都让美国的欧洲盟友深感忧虑。他的态度看起来要蓄意破坏多年来与伊朗沟通的努力，尽管没有任何有力证据表明伊朗在使诈。
Nowhere is this betrayal more galling for than in Trump’s incomprehensible infatuation with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s malevolent president, whose depredations in Ukraine, eastern Europe, the Balkans, Syria and in terms of deniable cyber attacks are systematically threatening European security. Putin must just love Trump. The president’s irresponsible repudiation of the Paris climate accord had epic consequences. It achieved something America’s enemies have only hitherto dreamt of: uniting the entire world against the US. He pulled off a similar trick at the recent G7 summit. Thanks to Trump, America’s worldwide authority is shot, or nearly so. And the longer Trump rampages unchecked, the worse the damage gets. Opinion polls show confidence in American leadership to be at a low point all around the world.
特朗普难以理喻地热爱俄国狠毒的总统弗拉基米尔·普京，这种背叛尤其无耻，普京蹂躏乌克兰、东欧、巴尔干地区和叙利亚，对网络攻击百般抵赖，这系统性地威胁着欧洲安全。普京也爱特朗普。总统不负责任地退出巴黎协定产生深远影响，让美国敌人得以实现以前想都不敢想的梦想，让全世界联合起来反对美国。最近召开的七国集团峰会上，他又成功地孤立自己。特朗普让美国在世界范围内的权威一塌糊涂。特朗普手伸得越长，损害越大。民调显示，全世界对美国领导力信心处于低点。
Trump’s cosy-ing up to autocrats such as Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan, his patronising, borderline misogynistic attitude to Europe’s de facto leader, Germany’s Angela Merkel, and Britain’s Theresa May, and his narrow-minded ignorance of other peoples and countries is embarrassing and humiliating, not least for his fellow Americans.
特朗普讨好土耳其的塔伊普·埃尔多安等专制者的做法、对欧洲实际领导人德国总理安格拉·默克尔和英国首相特雷莎·梅倨傲甚至近乎厌女的态度、对其他人民和国家的偏见和无知，令人尴尬，丢人现眼，不仅对美国同胞而言如此。
It makes America small again.
这让美国再次渺小。
The yawning gulf between the America of Bush Sr, when fitness for office, duty and responsibility were hallowed imperatives, and the era of uncaring, feckless, divisive narcissism personified by Donald Trump is most visible not in domestic or foreign policy, but in questions of values, race and morality. Americans will have their own point of view. But this is how it looks to a long-time foreign observer who has lived and breathed America for much of his adult life – and who briefly met Trump long ago on the Jersey shore when he opened his Taj Mahal casino.
老布什时代的美国，把追求执政、义务和责任的健康视为神圣之务，唐纳德·特朗普却一副自我陶醉的样子，无知者无畏，还挑拨是非，两者间巨大的鸿沟不仅体现在国内外政策中，最明显的差别莫过于价值、种族和道德问题。美国人可能有自己的看法，可对一个大段成年生活在美国度过的长期外国观察人士，对一个多年前当特朗普在泽西海岸开泰姬陵赌场时就与他有一面之缘的人而言，观感就是如此。
Trump just simply does not seem to grasp the importance of the time-honoured American values he, as president, is sworn to uphold. He shows scant regard or understanding of the Constitution and the separation of powers. His respect for the rights of those opposed to him is all but non-existent. He rails crudely against independent voices. And his relationship with the truth is sketchy at best, as shown by the frequent occasions on which he and his spokespeople been caught telling downright lies.
特朗普根本就没弄明白他宣誓就职总统时承诺要奉行的、历史悠久的美国价值是什么。对宪法和分权，他既不尊重，也不理解。尊重反对自己的人，对他而言压根不存在。他粗暴地斥责独立声音。至于真相，他充其量只能说个大概其，他和他的发言人还总被发现彻头彻尾地在扯谎。
While Trump is a coward by nature and a bully by instinct, he is also a closet racist and bigot. At no time has this been more evident than in his indefensible response to last weekend’s violence in Charlottesville. Trump’s belated denunciation of far-right neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan agitators did not begin to hide his true feelings: that the white supremacists behind the violence legitimately belong to the wider, respectable white American political base that put him in the White House.
特朗普色厉内荏，私下里还是个种族主义者和冥顽不灵的人。他上周对夏洛茨维尔暴力事件站不住脚的回应最是昭彰。特朗普对极右翼新纳粹和三K党祸害者的谴责姗姗来迟，那藏不住他心底的真实想法：暴力背后的白人至上主义者属于更广泛、数量可观的美国白人政治基础，正是这些人将他送进了白宫。
It was as though Trump were saying: “These guys might be neo-Nazis. These guys might even be wrong. But these guys are my guys and I get where they’re coming from. So I give them the benefit of the doubt.”
好像特朗普在说：“这些家伙可能是新纳粹。这些家伙兴许真做错了。可这些家伙和我是一拨的，我从他们当中来。所以我先推定他们无罪。”
His cynical repudiation on Tuesday of his previous statement condemning the racists was a low-point, even for Trump. There is a clear pattern of racism and immorality here, demeaning to the American presidency and definitive proof, if it were needed, of Trump’s singular unsuitability for the highest office.
周二，他竟然见利忘义，否决了此前谴责种族主义的言论，这真是糟糕透顶，甚至对特朗普自己的作为而言也是如此。显然这是种族歧视，道义难容，贬低了美国总统。如果还需要证据，这就板上钉钉，说明特朗普极不该居此至高之位。
Trump has attacked all Muslims, seeking at one point a universal ban on their entry into the US. He has attacked Mexicans and other Hispanics, employing gross generalisations about rapists and criminals. As a private citizen in New York, Trump discriminated against African Americans in housing rentals, campaigned for the death penalty in the notorious Central Park jogger case, and repeatedly abused Barack Obama on racial grounds, suggesting he was not a true-born American.
特朗普攻击所有穆斯林，曾试图一律禁止他们进入美国。他还攻击墨西哥人和其他拉美裔，大而化之地侮辱他们是强奸犯和罪犯。作为一个纽约公民，特朗普在租房事务上歧视非裔美国人，在臭名昭著的中央公园慢跑者案中支持死刑，反复在种族问题上非难贝拉克·奥巴马，认为他不是真正出生在美国的人。
译注：1989年4月，一名白人女子在纽约中央公园被强奸，左眼被挖，5名黑人男子被判有罪，实际上这是一起冤案。
As president, Trump has surrounded himself with far-right advisers such as Steve Bannon – now removed from his role after a chaotic tenure at the White House – Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller, whose views seem to differ little from those of the Charlottesville neo-Nazis. During last year’s campaign Trump failed repeatedly to convincingly distance himself from supporters whose idea of democracy was to parade about, shouting “Hail Trump!” On the institutional discrimination suffered, for example, by blacks and Hispanics in America’s justice and penal systems, he has nothing whatever to say.
作为总统，特朗普周围都是极右翼分子，例如史蒂夫·班农，他把白宫搞得一团糟，现在已经被解职了，还有塞巴斯蒂安·戈尔卡和史蒂芬·米勒，看起来他们的观点和夏洛茨维尔的新纳粹相去不远。去年大选中，特朗普多次尝试却未能令人信服地将自己与那些认为民主就是四处游行、高喊“特朗普万岁”的支持者分割开来。例如，美国司法和刑事系统中，黑人和拉美裔遭受体制性的歧视，他却对此一言不发。
And if you doubt the impact of such gross derelictions of duty, take a look at figures produced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. It reports that, nationally, “the number of hate crimes in the first half of 2017 spiked 91% compared to the same period in 2016” (which was itself a record-breaking year).
如果你怀疑这种重大渎职是否造成恶果，去看看美国伊斯兰关系委员会发布的数据。据报道，全国范围内，“2017年上半年，仇恨性犯罪数量与2016年同期相比增长了91%。”可2016年本身就破了纪录。
Seen from Britain, Trump is exploiting the same bitter brew of racial prejudice, populism, ultra-nationalism, economic resentment and sheer bloody ignorance that helped produce the vote for Brexit and the recent surge in support for far-right parties in France and elsewhere. This should be no surprise. This is how narcissism works, by sucking in others and making them think and act as badly as you do yourself.
从英国角度看，特朗普正在捧上促成英国退欧、法国和其他地区极右翼党派兴起的同一杯苦酒——种族偏见、民粹主义、超民族主义、经济憎恨和赤裸裸的无知。这并不令人吃惊。自我陶醉就是这样展开的，把人吸引过来，让他们的思想和行为和你一样糟糕。
Patriotism, flag-waving and love of country are all very well in their place. So, too, are policies designed to advance economic justice in disadvantaged places, such as parts of Ohio and Michigan or the north-east of England. But the anger and resentment of the middle class, of blue collar workers and trade unionists whose livelihoods are disappearing, was already in evidence 25 years ago when I trod the ravaged streets of downtown Detroit. So, too, was white America’s bottomless sense of entitlement – deeply puzzling in a country reared on ideas of rugged individualism, the frontier spirit of self-help, and manifest destiny.
爱国主义、民族情结和热爱祖国固然有其可取之处，旨在推动在贫困地区实现经济平等的政策也应如此，例如俄亥俄和密歇根的部分地区，或是英格兰东北部。可中产阶级、蓝领工人和工团主义者的忿恨，25年前我走在底特律市区被损坏的街区时就显而易见了，他们的生活每况愈下。显而易见的还有美国白人永不餍足的特权意识，在奉行坚韧不拔的个人主义、自助的拓荒精神和命运天定的一个国度，这着实让人深感不解。
That same anger was there in Chicago in 1988 when Mike Dukakis, the Democrats’ presidential hopeful, walked the Irish neighbourhoods and men came out of bars to throw bananas at Jesse Jackson (I watched them do it). It was there when self-styled insurgents Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot tapped it in subsequent presidential campaigns – and during the Obama years, although less often heard.
1988年的芝加哥，人们同样也感到愤怒。民主党总统竞选者迈克·杜卡基斯走在爱尔兰社区中，从酒吧出来的男人向杰西·杰克逊扔香蕉，我亲眼所见。自诩叛逆的帕特·布坎南和罗斯·佩罗在后来的总统选举中也利用了那种愤怒，奥巴马执政期间也是如此，尽管声势有所减弱。
译注：黑人民权领袖杰西·杰克逊是杜卡基斯1988年总统初选中的民主党对手。共和党候选人帕特·布坎南和独立候选人罗斯·佩罗1992年竞选总统，前者秉承白人保守主义，后者曾说错话将黑人说成“你们这些人”而败选。
Here’s what changed in the age of Trump: when such angry sentiments are whipped up and magnified for unscrupulous personal advantage, when a political leader encourages ordinary people to blame other groups, races or nations for their problems, when fear and blame become the twin forks of a wicked grab for power, and when the resulting fury tips over into hatred, division, Charlottesville-style violence and “America First” xenophobia, you know you are in big trouble.
Alarm bells should begin to ring. Just ask any European, where memories stretch back to the rise of fascism in the 1930s. Just ask anybody who ever confronted a skulking bully with a big stick. Are alarm bells ringing loudly enough across Trump’s America? Perhaps, after Charlottesville, they will.
可特朗普时代发生变化的是：这种愤怒情绪被煽动起来，用来满足无耻的个人利益，一个政治领袖竟鼓励普通人指责其他群体、种族和国家；恐惧和责难成为双叉，让他邪恶地攫取权力；这引发的狂怒终于一发不可收拾，转变为憎恨、裂痕、夏洛茨维尔的暴力和“美国第一”的仇外情绪，这就真的麻烦了，警钟应该响起。随便问一个欧洲人，他们还记得住二十世纪三十年代法西斯的兴起，随便问一个曾遭遇暗地里手持大棒的恶棍的人。警钟响彻了特朗普的美国吗？或许，夏洛茨维尔之后会的。
In the final analysis, Trump is just one man. But his actions, and non-actions, as president are hugely symbolic and exert massive negative influence. They feed on and actively encourage the disempowering sickness of resentment and entitlement that seems to infect much of white America. They frighten everybody else. And they threaten the world with the contagion of separation, division and paranoia.
归根到底，特朗普只是一个人，可作为总统，他的作为和不作为，具有极大的象征意义，会产生巨大的负面影响。他们利用并积极鼓励让人丧失权利的、病态的怨恨感和特权观，这看来在多数美国白人间传染开来。他们让所有其他人都感到害怕。他们用散播分离、撕裂和偏执来威胁这个世界。
If fitness, primarily moral fitness, is the ultimate test, as Bush Sr believed, then Trump has proven himself to be fundamentally unfit to lead. Lacking any sense of the greater good, as de Tocqueville defined it, Trump’s way is not the way to make America great again. On the contrary, it diminishes us all.
依照老布什的设想，健康，主要是道德健康，作为终极标准，那么特朗普表现得压根就不称职。特朗普的方式，正如托克维尔所言，不去追求更高的善，就不会让美国再次伟大。相反，他让所有人都显得渺小。
Simon Tisdall has reported on the US for the Guardian and Observer since 1988. He was the Guardian’s White House correspondent and US Editor based in Washington DC from 1989-1994.
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