Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Trump: is he really a deranged egotist? What do you think?
Is Trump the problem – or the solution? Join the debate by emailing letters@westerndailypress.co.uk and including your name and address
BOB Gelder’s letter in the February 14th issue of the presents a classic offshore view of Donald Trump as a deranged egotist – a view that has been carefully developed by the federally managed US news desks with the help of Mr Trump’s own characteristic bombastic and self-righteous comments and conduct.
In reality however, ‘deranged’ is not an adjective that can be applied to him, as the majority of impartial students of President Trump’s complete ‘State of the Union’ address would readily agree. Well thought out and well received, that address detailed the sensible actions and appointments made by a president who went as far as anyone could to improve the state of the nation while lacking a majority in Congress.
Trump’s problem – and the reason that he is so widely disliked by those who rely on edited video material and popular news media for their opinion of him – is that he so easily and carelessly dismisses the opinions and experiences of others.
In Trump’s world, if you disagree with him, he may regard you as an idiot and it is a mark of the respect in which he is held that he has progressed as far as he has in the Republican party while making enemies of so many of its leading members. It is this – Trump’s uniquely apolitical character – which brings such focus to his vision of what needs to be done to reintroduce the function of democracy to America’s federal government.
Against this backdrop, let me respond to Mr Gelder’s comment that ‘for an over-inflated egoist
(sic) to encourage Russia to act aggressively against a partner within the alliance if they have not met the full ante is quite frankly, a clear indication that Trump is deranged’.
This is pure anti-Trump propaganda that issues from the current US news desks. The reality is that as US president, Donald Trump was the first Western leader to send effective anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, doing so before the Russian invasion had even started, these being Javelins that were used so effectively against the first wave of invading Russian tanks. Note that he did so in the teeth of opposition from the same people who are now saying that he is anti-NATO and if elected, will refuse to send any more of these or any other weaponry to Europe.
If however Mr Gelder means to say that for America to form a collegiate federal government after the next presidential election, Trump is not our ‘solution’, he may have some logic on his side. There is so much wrong with America today that corrective action ratified in committee and congress will be too drawn out to prepare the way for Trump’s successor in 2028. To see past the endless propaganda that passes for US news these days, readers would be well advised to study the lectures and commentaries produced by Professor Victor Davis Hanson, a highly accredited and qualified political commentator who is identified on Wikipedia simply by name. To see what he has to say about America today, turn to his videos while they are still to be seen on YouTube. It isn’t just the effects of unrestricted and accelerating deficit spending by Washington DC that worry Prof Hanson.
He points to the ever increasing evidence that America’s central government may be attempting to form an autocratic one-party state and if so, they are closer to success than most people realize. If this is their goal and they do succeed, the role of America on the world stage will be permanently changed and NATO will exist in name only. The odds are stacked so heavily against Donald Trump, who opposes all autocracy, that some people believe that he may not survive for much longer. We have a history in this country of key people dying in mysterious circumstances – the most recent being Antonin Scalia – and Donald Trump could just be one more.
Many observers – myself included – believed until recently that plans for the upcoming financial crisis had gone awry and that increasing pressure on the US banking system in 2024 had accelerated faster than Washington DC had expected, leading to inevitable disaster for the incumbent government in the November elections. It now appears however that this may not be the case. If a sufficiently severe financial disaster can be brought about with a crash that reduces people’s savings by over 70%, riots may be fomented and these could be used by the central government as a justification for the institution of martial law.
That would eliminate the threat posed to them by the presidential elections and pave the way for a ‘temporary’ unelected government. The very fact that this all sounds fantastic and unbelievable is what makes it possible.
Europe is fighting an increasingly desperate battle against the autocracies which are led by Russia. America may soon be waking up to the realization that it too is fighting a desperate internal war against autocracy, a form of government that always evolves into totalitarianism and then into tyranny. It may be a forlorn hope to do so, but the nation is relying on one man to lead to the charge against it.
The final sentence in Bob Gelder’s letter reads: ‘Donald Trump is not your solution’. In fact, with no one else brave and brash enough to fill that role while having sufficient public support to do so, he is our only solution.
Anthony F Jones Monahans, Texas, USA