THE OLD REMEMBER TOO MUCH ?

This Blog suggested - (Blog April  11th. 2017) that the reason behind President Trump's  sayings and doings - unsayings and undoings  too  -  is to do what ancient emperors did, keep everyone on tenterhooks afraid to move for fear of losing the imperial favour, being hired today , fired next week all to create not a strong Presidency but a strong president , not one  strong America but one strong American.   Creating tensions with both enemies and friends is a strategy to show who is boss in any case. We Oldies in Europe grew up in a world of Dictators and know how it happens, Spain, Portugal,Italy, Germany, Russia, and fascist movements in Ireland, Britain, France....These days we seem to forget that Europe is a very recent convert to the concept of democracy not the cradle of it. But Old Fellows  sitting  at the city gates remember.

Now  this  Old Man at the City Gates is back after an episode of a broken leg and some broken hopes and he thinks he sees the situation not just  worryingly similar but worryingly worse.

Internal  disruption  in the USA , street riots, threats hurled from America to N Korea and back , international  loss of  the  dignity not only of  a government making a mess of things but of  government in general. If Donald Trump had been defeated in the election , or if he had been confronted soon after it with a real threat of impeachment  some of the tensions in American life could have been damped down . Now however, any attempt to remove  the president ranging from  physical attack to  leisurely impeachment could easily be a  spark to inflame  passions even more. In a  country where so many people  can possess not just arms but arsenals by constitutional right , where there are   tensions between the States' and the United States' administrations, racial problems, widespread poverty, something more rational has to be done than  distract the passions of citizens by  tweets or verbal rockets  from the golf course.

A  favourite tactic by politicians and military under threat or seeking status is to have a war. Winston Churchill - who said he could not understand why his country's government would not a open up a front in the Dardanelles because, " ....after all", he said," it would only cost a few hundred lives, French generals  defeated in battle who said, "Another 20,000  troops and we could have succeeded...."  found war useful  not only to acquire foreign  power, land and resources  but to strengthen home government.  Thatcher had a war, Blair had a war, the leaders of N Korea and of the USA threaten war  because their leadership as they see it demands it.  For Donald Trump the creation of   uncertainty and dependence on the imperial pleasure is as real now as in Nero's day. Some American newspapers have compared  Trump's  methods to those of Julius Caesar, but Nero's come closer . The image of Trump tweeting while Homs burns  still stands.

It may be said that talk of civil war in the USA  and  dissolution of the states is just alarmist. But no union of states or people is forever. Hitler's Reich was to last for a thousand years, it lasted only a few. The European  empires dissolved, so did the Soviet Union. The European Union may disunite or not, nobody really knows. The USA suffers  rancour about wasting money on foreign wars that cannot be won as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere. Making war far away from home does not help any more - people invent their own responses to that  with everyday means like motor vans and gas cylinders causing terror even to those  whose governments have more technolgy for war  than they could ever need.

If the United nations were willing and able it could perhaps do something to discipline those whose wars have caused millions of deaths, starvations and miseries. But it has proved a disappointment just as the League of Nations  did to previous generations.  The best we can do - Old Folk at the City Gates or  nowhere in particular who have seen it all before  - is  understand and say what we believe is happening and hope we can all do that together.  We can still hope that  our American friends may  have a President truly worthy of them.

Then America could indeed hope to become great. So could we all.

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Casual thought :    So "fighting civil war politics"  in Ireland was a shame and something we Irish do......?    Spare a thought for civil war politics in America which has emerged strong again after so many years........it's what people do........