Don’s Putin spin on his trip to Asia
IAM in West Palm Beach in Florida trying to take a break. It’s not easy in the days of the internet as I find problems pursue you. At least I have the consolation that phone calls and messages from home tend to stop at one o’clock because of the time difference.
If I really had the self-discipline I could turn my phone off but then inevitably something important would come up. I think I preferred telegrams. Remember them?
Still here I am in Trumpland. He’s back from Asia and basking in the respect the Donald thinks he was shown by Vladimir Putin and President Duterte of the Philippines, and must regard returning home to the US as tiresome.
Here there are checks and balances to theoretically curtail his potentially irrational behaviour. Oh how he must wish he were Putin, free to crack the whip and pocket lots of change.
He could probably order people to stay in his hotels and spend money in his golf clubs. Then to get a little perspective on things, the headline in the Palm Beach
Post on Thursday was “Will
Trump’s return snarl traffic?” El Presidente is likely to spend Thanksgiving at Mar-a-lago his
Palm Beach Club which he calls “the Winter White House”. That’s where he likes to eat chocolate cake with world leaders. I travel home next week and I hope I don’t get caught up in the President’s wake.
My real attention this week has been focused on Zimbabwe and what looks like the last chapter in Robert Mugabe’s tyrannical rule. His avaricious wife, Grace also looks like she’s for the chop.
One of the stranger episodes of my life was when I was last in Zimbabwe in 1970. I had been working in an Anglican Mission in South Africa and was on my way home.
I had the bizarre experience of having lunch with the then President of Rhodesia Clifford Dupont and his wife.
He was the second person to sign the Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain in 1965. I sat hoping he would not enquire what I’d been doing in South Africa.
In essence I had been breaking the law on a regular basis attempting to do my small bit to help the Zulu nation and at the time had a black girlfriend which was illegal during the apartheid regime. It was a surreal experience and sometimes I have to pinch myself so that I know it really happened.
He must wish he were Putin, free to crack the whip