‘Give me personal space’ remark offers levity amid horrific week
WHAT a horrific week!
With the concatenation of terrorist events going on around the globe you’d be afraid to turn on the telly or the radio. The nutjob in the White House is bizarrely the only person providing comic relief, which is saying something! There seems to be no end to the American President’s ability to astound with the slightest of soundbites. Upon hearing on Sunday that ten US sailors were missing after a US warship collided with an oil tanker, he responded: ‘That’s too bad’. Strongly criticised on social media, he later tweeted: ‘Thoughts & prayers are w/ our @USNavy sailors aboard the #USSJohnSMcCain where search & rescue efforts are underway.’
As if in Shakespearian pathetic fallacy, much of the US was cloaked in darkness yesterday (Monday) as a solar eclipse blackened whole states for the first time in 99 years. Lately, the great Bard himself would have struggled to wrap his considerable intellect around the goings on in the West Wing these days.
Like an Emperor with no clothes, Donald Trump has been exposed for what he has always been, a vain, selfish man who has a poor grasp of English, far poorer than that possessed by many of the immigrants he is trying to get kicked out of ‘ his’ country. Steve Bannon, his chief strategist, disappeared like a Sith lord from Star Wars from the White House - in a cloud of thick smoke and verbiage last week, one of many to be jettisoned from the Trump conveyor belt. The only problem is that firing people just because it looks powerful hasn’t ever been a successful or sane way to run a country.
Meanwhile the actions of terrorists in Barcelona, Cambrils, and in Turku, Finland, once again highlighted the new war being fought by police forces across the world every day. This is not the first, nor will it be the last time, that people’s personal freedom will come under threat. Within hours of the attack at Las Ramblas, there were calls for barriers to be erected. People express fear of flying to European and American cities, not realising that this is playing right into the hands of the terrorists.
The chances of being on a street or in a venue where an attack occurs are so slim as to be not worth thinking about.
I have not seen such division in the United States in my lifetime. American presidents have often be equated to puppets and in Donald Trump the country has a 6ft 2in puppet who will literally do anything to protect his votes. This included defending white supremacists on television last week shortly after a giant inflatable ‘Trump’ chicken was seen hovering curiously behind the White House. You would almost feel sorry for the man if he wasn’t so obnoxious.
There is a real danger for everyone so long as this man remains in the White House. All signs point to him being impeached, or at worst, not being re-elected.
There are some Democrat candidates emerging like Kamal Harris from California, a straight talking, call-it-as-she-sees-it woman, who has been highly critical of her party’s policies in the last election.
She was also won over Democrats for her grilling of attorney general Jeff Sessions during a recent Senate hearing.
Amid the flurry of news, my 5-year-old daughter gave me the quote of the month, when her brother and cousins hopped under the covers with her last week, she implored: ‘Give me my personal space!’
A view no doubt echoed by millions of people across the world every time the nightmarish voice of Donald Trump bellows forth.