看马屁精，如何排队亲吻戒指！| 卫报

Let the humiliation Olympics begin. As Donald Trump readies himself for his revenge tour, world leaders and business moguls are falling over themselves to show the incoming president how much they admire him. Even if it means making an embarrassment of themselves in the process.

让耻辱的奥运会开始吧。当唐纳德·特朗普准备开始他的复仇之旅时，世界各国领导人和商界大亨们都争先恐后地向这位新任总统展示他们有多么钦佩他。即使这意味着让他们自己在这个过程中感到尴尬。

While it’s only natural for the rich and powerful to try to ingratiate themselves with the incoming president of the United States, the extent to which people are lining up to kiss the ring is remarkable. This isn’t just diplomacy as usual: it speaks to Trump’s unapologetically transactional politics. He has made it very clear that loyalty will be richly rewarded and promised to ruthlessly pursue his enemies. As a result, we appear to have entered into a golden age of brown-nosing.

虽然富人和权贵们试图讨好美国新总统是理所当然的事情，但人们排队亲吻戒指的程度却令人震惊。这不仅仅是常见的外交手段：它表明了特朗普毫无歉意的交易政治。他明确表示，忠诚将得到丰厚的回报，并承诺将无情地追捕他的敌人。因此，我们似乎进入了拍马屁的黄金时代。

Step one in transforming yourself into Trump’s lapdog: delete any previous criticism of the former president that you may have ill-advisedly put out back when you still had a spine. See, for example, Australia’s ambassador to the US, the former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who appears to have stayed up all night recently hitting the delete button on Twitter.

把自己变成特朗普的走狗的第一步是删除你以前对前总统的所有批评，这些批评可能是你在还算有骨气时不明智地发表的。例如，澳大利亚驻美国大使、前总理陆克文最近似乎整夜未眠，一直在推特上点击删除按钮。

“[Trump is] the most destructive president in history,” Rudd declared on Twitter, now X, in 2020, for example. “He drags America and democracy through the mud.”

例如，2020 年，陆克文在 Twitter（现为 X）上宣称：“特朗普是历史上最具破坏性的总统。他把美国和民主拖入泥潭。”

That tweet, along with others critical of the former president, has now been wiped clean. In a statement posted on his personal website last week, Rudd explained he had made those remarks back when he was a political commentator and deleted them to “eliminate the possibility of such comments being misconstrued as reflecting his positions as Ambassador”.

这条推文以及其他批评前总统的推文现已被删除。陆克文在上周的个人网站上发表的声明中解释道，这些言论是他在担任政治评论员时发表的，他删除这些言论是为了“避免这些言论被误解为代表他作为大使的立场”。

A more honest explanation might be that Rudd is terrified Trump will come up with a nasty nickname for him (Rudd the dud?) and impose enormous tariffs on Australia as payback.

更为诚实的解释可能是，陆克文害怕特朗普会给他起一个难听的绰号（笨蛋陆克文？），并对澳大利亚征收高额关税作为报复。

You can press the delete button as much as you like, but the internet has a very long memory. So, if you can’t completely delete your way into Trump’s good books the next step is to deny and defuse. Technically, you may have made some nasty comments about Trump in the past but you didn’t mean them and, anyway, you’ve seen the light now.

你可以随意按下删除键，但互联网的记忆力非常强。所以，如果你不能完全删除自己，赢得特朗普的好感，那么下一步就是否认和化解。从技术上讲， 你过去可能对特朗普发表过一些恶意评论，但你不是有意的，而且无论如何，你现在已经明白了。

This appears to be how the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, is dealing with the fact that, during his days as a backbench MP, he described Trump as a “tyrant” and “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”. Lammy has also called Trump “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic” and “no friend of Britain”.

英国外交大臣戴维·拉米 (David Lammy) 似乎正以这种方式处理这一事实：在他担任后座议员期间，他将特朗普描述为“暴君”和“仇视女性、同情新纳粹的反社会者”。拉米还称特朗普“自欺欺人、不诚实、仇外、自恋”并且“不是英国的朋友”。

Seems pretty unambiguous. According to Lammy, we should forget all that because it is “old news”. In an interview with the BBC, Lammy added that he’d made those comments when he was a silly backbencher and he knows better now. “[W]hat you say as a backbencher and what you do wearing the real duty of public office are two different things,” Lammy explained. “And I am foreign secretary. There are things I know now that I didn’t know back then.”

似乎非常明确。根据拉米的说法，我们应该忘记所有这些，因为这些都是“旧闻”。在接受 BBC 采访时，拉米补充说，他在还是一名愚蠢的后座议员时就发表了这些言论，现在他更清楚了。“你作为后座议员所说的话和你真正履行公职职责时所做的事情是两码事，”拉米解释道。“我是外交大臣。有些事情我现在知道，而当时我并不知道。”

What exactly does the older and wiser Lammy now know? Perhaps that he really likes having power and doesn’t want anything as silly as having consistent morals to jeopardize it?

年纪更大、更睿智的拉米现在到底知道些什么呢？也许他真的喜欢拥有权力，不想让任何愚蠢的事情（比如坚持道德）危及权力？

Trump has proved you can get away with anything; that power puts you above the law

特朗普已经证明你可以逃脱任何惩罚；这种权力让你凌驾于法律之上

To be fair, it seems that a lot of people are now finding out a lot of important facts about Trump that they didn’t know before because JD Vance has also made good use of Lammy’s “older and wiser” defence. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, Vance called Trump an “idiot” who was “unfit for our nation’s highest office”. He also characterized the man who would become his boss as “America’s Hitler”. The incoming vice-president has of course, now realised that he was “wrong about Donald Trump”.

公平地说，似乎很多人现在发现了很多关于特朗普的重要事实，而这些事实是他们以前不知道的，因为 JD Vance 也充分利用了 Lammy 的“年长和睿智”辩护。在 2016 年大选前夕，Vance 称特朗普是个“白痴”，“不适合担任我们国家的最高职位”。他还将这位即将成为他老板的人描述为“美国的希特勒”。这位即将上任的副总统现在当然意识到他“对唐纳德·特朗普的判断是错误的”。

And he is in powerful company: you would struggle to find a titan of industry who hasn’t criticized Trump in the past and who isn’t rapidly backtracking now. The Apple CEO, Tim Cook; the Google CEO, Sundar Pichai; the Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella; and the former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos are among the high-profile business figures who have radically changed their tune when it comes to Trump.

他身处一个强大的圈子：你很难找到一个过去没有批评过特朗普、现在又迅速改口的行业巨头。苹果首席执行官蒂姆·库克、谷歌首席执行官桑达尔·皮查伊、微软首席执行官萨蒂亚·纳德拉和前亚马逊首席执行官杰夫·贝佐斯都是在特朗普问题上彻底改变态度的知名商界人士。

The Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has also undergone a Trumpian metamorphosis. He once accused Trump of inciting violence and undermining the law; now he is lining up with the rest of the tech bros to gush about how excited he is to work with the Trump administration. Does Zuck always fawn over incoming presidents? No, he doesn’t. As Popular Information has noted: “Zuckerberg offered no congratulatory message at all to Biden after his 2020 victory.”

Meta 首席执行官马克·扎克伯格也经历了特朗普式的蜕变。他曾指责特朗普煽动暴力和破坏法律；现在他正与其他科技兄弟一起滔滔不绝地谈论他与特朗普政府合作的兴奋之情。扎克伯格总是对新任总统阿谀奉承吗？不，他没有。正如Popular Information 所指出的：“拜登在 2020 年获胜后，扎克伯格根本没有向他发出任何祝贺信息。”

More broadly, Zuckerberg, who has been busy drastically revamping his wardrobe and public image, seems to have decided that Trump is a figure to admire and emulate. He called Trump a “badass” in July, after the former president survived an assassination attempt. Then, during a recent conference, Zuckerberg said the biggest mistake of his career was apologizing too much. Trump, after all, has proved you can get away with anything; that power puts you above the law.

从更广泛的角度来看，一直忙于彻底改造自己的着装和公众形象的扎克伯格似乎已经认定特朗普是一个值得敬佩和效仿的人物。今年 7 月，在前总统特朗普躲过暗杀后，扎克伯格称特朗普为“坏蛋”。然后，在最近的一次会议上，扎克伯格表示，他职业生涯中最大的错误就是道歉太多。毕竟，特朗普已经证明你可以逃脱任何惩罚；这种权力让你凌驾于法律之上。

Weaseling your way into Trump’s good books may be humiliating but it comes with a big payday: the president-elect is already busy doling out favours to friends. Elon Musk, for example, who spent over $100m getting Trump elected has been tapped to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. This allows Musk, whose companies have received more than $15.4bn in government contracts, to be a lot more efficient about rerouting public funds into his private purse.

想方设法讨好特朗普可能会很丢脸，但这样做能带来丰厚回报：这位当选总统已经忙着给朋友们施恩了。例如，埃隆·马斯克花费了 1 亿多美元帮助特朗普当选，现在他被任命为新成立的政府效率部负责人。这使得马斯克能够更高效地将公共资金转入他的私人钱包，他的公司已经获得了超过154 亿美元的政府合同。

Meanwhile Trump is assembling his cabinet, and it is has become apparent that the most important qualification for office is a history of saying nice things about the president-elect. Pete Hegseth, for example, a Fox News personality and military veteran with no meaningful foreign policy experience has been picked to be secretary of defense. The New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who stood by Trump when he faced impeachment and became one of his staunchest cheerleaders, is being rewarded for her sycophancy with a gig as ambassador to the United Nations. Like Hegseth, she also has no meaningful foreign policy experience but she will support Israel and Trump no matter what they do, which is all that matters.

与此同时，特朗普正在组建内阁，显然，担任内阁职务最重要的资格就是曾经为当选总统说过好话。例如，福克斯新闻主持人、军事老兵皮特·赫格塞斯被选为国防部长，他没有任何外交政策经验。纽约女众议员埃莉斯·斯特凡尼克在特朗普面临弹劾时站在他这边，成为他最坚定的支持者之一。现在，她因为阿谀奉承而获得了驻联合国大使的职位。和赫格塞斯一样，她也没有外交政策经验，但无论以色列和特朗普做什么，她都会支持他们，这才是最重要的。

The South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, will reportedly lead the Department of Homeland Security. She doesn’t have a huge amount of experience in this area, nor does she represent a border state, but she does have a lot of experience in trying to curry favour with Trump. Noem, who is famous for once shooting her family dog, has echoed Trump’s hardline immigration rhetoric and plied the president with gifts. In 2020, the New York Times reported that Noem welcomed Trump to her corner of the country with a “a four-foot replica of Mount Rushmore” that included his face on it. Noem also moderated the famous campaign town hall in Pennsylvania where Trump stopped taking questions and, instead, danced (along with Noem) to his favourite songs.

据报道，南达科他州州长克里斯蒂·诺姆将领导国土安全部。她在这个领域没有丰富的经验，也不代表边境州，但她在讨好特朗普方面确实有很多经验。诺姆因曾枪杀自己的家犬而出名，她附和了特朗普强硬的移民言论，并向总统赠送礼物。2020年，《纽约时报》报道诺姆用“一座四英尺高的拉什莫尔山复制品”欢迎特朗普来到她的家乡，上面有他的头像。诺姆还主持了宾夕法尼亚州著名的竞选市政厅会议，特朗普在会上不再回答问题，而是（和诺姆一起）随着他最喜欢的歌曲跳舞。

Then there’s “Little Marco”. Trump levelled some very personal attacks against Marco Rubio and the senator responded in kind back in 2016. Since then, however, Rubio has fallen into line and groveled at Trump’s feet enough that it seems he’s being forgiven for mocking the size of Trump’s hands and saying “he’s gonna make America orange”. Rubio is reportedly being considered for secretary of state.

还有“小马可”。2016年，特朗普对马可·卢比奥进行了人身攻击，这位参议员也进行了回击。但自那以后，卢比奥就顺从了，在特朗普面前卑躬屈膝，似乎他嘲笑特朗普的手有多大，并说“他要把美国变成橙色”，这种行为似乎得到了原谅。据报道，卢比奥正在考虑担任国务卿。

So there you go: we are officially a quid pro quo economy now. It’s no wonder that Trump’s former critics are all suddenly reinventing themselves and tech bros are lining up to say how “excited’ they are to work with the Trump administration. What’s a little bit of brown-nosing, when you’re rewarded with a giant pot of gold?

所以，现在我们正式进入了互惠互利经济。难怪特朗普以前的批评者都突然改邪归正，科技界兄弟们也纷纷表示，他们很高兴能与特朗普政府合作。当你能得到一大笔金子作为奖励时，一点点奉承又算得了什么呢？