I was just watching the morning news over my usual Saturday morning doughnuts, and I think I need to point out a striking – if not rather chilling – correlation between three of the top stories. First there was this news that White House press secretary Katie Zacharia has been fired after just five days in the job. They can dress it up all they want, but she was clearly unqualified, and surely it should be blatantly obvious that Trump just hired her because she looks good, and he wanted an attractive, pretty woman speaking for him at press conferences. He doesn’t give a flying fuck that geopolitics is now probably at it’s most critical point in eighty years – as long as he looks good.
On top of that, there was this story that Trump has waived sanctions on Russia in the wake of his row with Vlodimir Zelensky. Frankly, when I first saw that news when I turned my computer on earlier, I almost cried out in disgust. The international community should be defending Ukraine against the abject aggression of Russia, but instead Trump wants to buddy up to Putin in an effort to keep oil prices low. They are only as high as they are because Trump attacked Iran, but the disgrace to human civilisation prioritises them and thus his poll ratings over defending a European democracy from an imperial aggressor. How any democratic country, let alone the world’s leading economy, could let it’s president run so roughshod over international protocol and basic human decency is beyond me.
To cap it all, there was this story of yet another horrific American school shooting. A sixteen year old has gone into a school in Oregon and killed a five year old child and twenty-five year old teacher. I’m sorry but such news makes me want to puke: how can Americans keep hearing of such massacres, but still do nothing about their gun control laws? If such an atrocity happened in the UK, I would certainly hope we would do something to prevent it from happening again; yet the Yanks seem too wedded to their guns. I frankly find it totally unfathomable.
I really don’t like saying this, but as I wrote here a few days ago, I no longer see how we can respect America. It used to be an awesome nation: all the greatest films came from there. Yet now, since it re-elected Trump, it has descended into a global laughing stock: a nation of arrogant bullies and pseudo-fascists. I’m afraid these three stories on the news this morning just cemented that view. To be hit by all three in one bulletin made it clear how far this once great nation has dropped. It’s not that I now hate all Americans, or blame them for their current government; but I don’t think they have any right to be as proud of their nation as they often appear to be.
