Eighty days before the wave hits the wall.
A Sunday rant or is it a prayer?
Trump continues to make the USA look ridiculous on the world stage by claiming he will make the Strait of Hormuz ‘US territory.’ After hiding in a food container to exit his aircraft he abandoned his staff in the belief the plane might get shot down. What a sad embarrassment the leadership of a once great superpower has become. The world no longer looks on with envy at US riches and power, and they don’t laugh either. They watch in bewilderment and wonder if the same thing could happen to them.
The best funded entertainers, speakers and liars inherit positions of national leadership in a democracy. It is an advertising campaign with actors. There is no school of leadership; no academy where prospective national leaders can be trained in diplomacy, economics, cultural norms, and international trade. Instead, we elect an unqualified fool and hope he will be well advised. We elect a leader who is expected to be an engineer who builds bridges between nations with no qualifications. The hope is well qualified civil servants will keep the system running. In the USA, the well qualified have all resigned or been fired. A man who wants to wash people’s lungs out with bleach is their doctor. A man who started a war with Iran is their diplomat.
The USA is full of highly educated, wise, and superb people but the world could be forgiven for thinking all Americans wear red caps, carry automatic weapons, take steroids, watch Fox ‘news,’ weigh 200 pounds and shoot up schools. An image the media love to share. A place where every week there is a mass shooting, where cops murder people on camera, where ICE agents do the same. Where the rich buy themselves pardons and the innocent go prison. It’s the land of the free – isn’t it?
Europeans wonder why Americans elected Trump, why the top people in the nation are unable to remove him, or why their courts make verdicts but never arrest anyone. They see a bully threatening his way into dominance and they cower.
It has until now, been the expectation of Americans and world leaders that there would be an element of virtue or shame within at least one of the three pillars of the US government. US power today is in the hands of a very small number of ruthless billionaires who own almost every asset in the USA. Not only do they own the assets, but they also own the Presidency, the Supreme Court and Congress. Some they own with bribery, others with blackmail and a few even believe the fascist agenda they have imposed upon their nation. When big money owns government, law, law enforcement and the military, the people are helpless.
The USA is a dictatorship led by a man who is quite possibly the most depraved and disgusting representative of any nation in history. He has no moral standards, there is nothing he will not do, no one he will not damage, and yet he is still supported by at least three out of ten US citizens and owned by the seriously rich. He cares about nothing, so there is nothing he can be threatened with. He is dying and quite possibly feels he has nothing to lose, so he can vent his final bursts of hatred upon a society that excluded and rejected him for his depravity. He intends to make an establishment he was never a part of sorry, by destroying it. He is a resentful failure who intends to make the world sorry.
Outside the USA, national leaders are beginning to ignore Trump. This will be a gradual process because there are so may who still depend on access to US markets. The Trump tariff weapon is no longer causing the fear and damage it once did, so he threatens to withdraw US military assets from Europe, but Europe has already built that possibility into their future planning. There is nothing a malignant narcissist hates more than being ignored and becoming irrelevant.
Trump is far from irrelevant, he is still President of the USA, but he is being excluded. Excluded from negotiations in Ukraine, excluded from negotiation with Iran, excluded from NATO conferences and from trade deals with Canada.
Germany, France, and UK insist on preparing their own negotiating platform for Ukraine because they know Trump is working in close cooperation with Putin. That partnership should also explain why the USA has become so damaged in the past two years.
Trump will demand to be noticed with more and more bluster and threats, more and more outrageous claims, more lies, more arrests of the innocent, more damage to the USA, more war, and to top it all, more tax cuts for the billionaires. There will be more threats against Greenland, Cuba, Panama, Spain, Mexico, and Canada. In response, the world must exclude Trump. If the USA wants to isolate themselves we shouldn’t stand in their way. The UK did the same with Brexit and look where that got them.
Only Americans can change the situation. The forlorn hope is mid-term elections will restore order. The elections will be rigged, threatened, and challenged, or the results will be ignored. The mid-terms will be the straw that breaks the remaining façade of US democracy and could lead to the break-up of the country. The markets will collapse, the country will withdraw into isolationism, the middle class will disappear, the rich will control everything by diktat. Rule of law will be replaced by law of rulers; the military will take an oath to the President.
I once hoped the ‘heroes’ at the top of the US military who had sworn an oath to the constitution would resist, but they have been isolated and purged while Congress wash their hands like Pilate, avoiding all responsibility and hide inside their well-paid farcical committees. Like all lawyers they talk well but do absolutely nothing!
I hope beyond hope, enough Republican voters will realise their health, food, fuel, and rent bills have risen because Trump and his billionaire backers have made it so; then join the best of the best to build a wall to hold back the tsunami of hate and destruction surging towards them. Then they can start the long climb back towards cooperation, decency, and compassion to create real international strength.
On November 3rd, the great and hopeful experiment that began with the declaration of independence and the US Constitution could be over.
Only eighty days before the wave hits the wall.
Robin Horsfall
Who Dares Shares!
PS: Yes, I have TDS and I am very, very bias. If you are bias too, give me a helping hand and upgrade to paid.
Elbows up Canada😀
Robin, You observe so accutely and write so well. It is so disappointing that what was once a nation to admire in many ways, steered by a leading position once admired and respected, is imploding.