RANT: ENOUGH ALREADY!

 

  

I’M SURE I SPEAK for most of the world’s population when I say I AM SO OVER, SO SICK-AND-TIRED of Donald Trump and the American project he’s steering down the drain, yelling like the captain on the Titanic: “Everything’s okay! Full steam ahead!” Trump 2.0 is like being stuck under a swarm of gnats in the middle of a swamp. Swat at them all you will, they’ll follow you everywhere with no end in sight. In his first term as president, Trump was at least entertaining. His asides and admonitions were crude but shades livelier than the pretty mouth noises most politicians make when they’re trying to convince you to take them seriously. In the States, especially, we see how many of them are bought off by this or that special interest or are led around by this or that unholy appetite or brain-dead belief system. And Trump was going to end all that, to "drain the swamp". Instead he's become a swamp creature.

Donald Trump is soooo last decade!

DURING his presidential campaign, he called himself the “peace president”, promising he would not start any new wars and would end the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine. He promised to cut Pentagon spending and focus his attention on the plight of the American working class, on job-creation, border security, reestablishing America’s industrial capacity, and so  on. Promises made; promises not kept and falling short of the mark by a country mile! In his foreign policy initiatives, every day, he and his team of incompetents seem to put their collective foot in it. Whether it’s his  erratic agenda with respect to Russia/Ukraine, or Gaza/Israel, or Iran, “Ch-eye-na”, etc. they are truly the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.

 

TAKE RUSSIA, for instance. A nuclear-armed superpower, the Russians have repeatedly said that NATO in Ukraine poses an existential threat for them and is their reddest of red lines. President Putin has expressed, for years, Russia’s alarm over NATO’s inexorable march to the East, surrounding Russia’s borders with NATO-aligned states. Ukraine was the last straw. In mid-December 2021, President Putin spoke by phone with President Biden and came away convinced the U.S. president understood Russia’s legitimate* security concerns. In late December 2021, President Putin made a final entreaty to the United States to cease plans to admit Ukraine into the Western military alliance. Biden seems to have agreed, and Moscow was convinced they had a deal. But, much to President Putin’s and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s chagrin, in early January 2022 they learned the Biden administration had reversed its position and that missile emplacements, sanctions, and Ukraine’s NATO candidacy were still on the table. Left with no choice, in February Russia invaded.

We know that Britain’s PM, Boris Johnson, made a trip in March to Kiev and convinced Ukraine’s President Zelensky to tear up the treaty deal with Russia that was all but complete during peace talks held in Istanbul. The conflict could have ended in March 2022. Instead, the bloodshed continues with Russian forces poised to advance to the Dnieper River, and there are rumours of an impending evacuation of the Ukrainian government to Lviv in western Ukraine. 

 

    Remember this? We thought the bromance was over. Sigh.

All that is to say Trump could have deescalated the war and forced Zelensky to negotiate by stopping U.S. military aid and intelligence operations on Day One of his presidency. It was Biden’s war. Now it’s his, and Trump is not wearing it well. His policies in Ukraine are virtually identical to his predecessor: shipping arms and threatening sanctions. Instead of making a deal, he lectures the Russians, offering them nothing that would incentivize them to start serious negotiations. Yes, there are talks and diplomatic engagement between Russia and the United States—which is an improvement from Biden presidency—but they’re mostly for show, with Trump’s carrot and stick negotiating tactics adding to the confusion. Everyone knows by now that it’s amateur night in Washington. This crew doesn’t know how to do diplomacy, and so the Russians see no diplomatic solution for the Ukraine problem; they will settle the matter on the battlefield. 

Daily, Ukraine continues to lose territory and its army is being methodically shredded by Russian forces. Trump’s arming of Kiev, even if he has arm-twisted the Europeans into paying for it [Suckers! Ed.] will not change the battlefield’s ultimate trajectory, which is very much in Russia’s favour.

👉At 79, I think President Trump has lost his mojo. He may even be in the early stages of senility, and like Biden, that is a dangerous place for an American president to be. Dangerous for us and everyone, I mean.

👉I’ve left out a good many details in this short overview. But one of the irksome things about the whole affair is how Trump suckered everyone into thinking he was different from run-of-the-mill politicians. Voters in the U.S. believed he would end the war in Ukraine, a pledge he made often in his 2024 campaign. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Most of us are in the later category. And that’s just his Ukraine clusterfuck. Three-and-a half more years. Let’s hope we make it!

 

  

Cheers, Jake. ____________________________________

 

* Having been invaded via the plains of Ukraine several times in the last couple of centuries, it should be obvious how Moscow views, in particular, NATO emplacements of so-called ‘defensive’ long-range missiles abutting its soil. Not to mention troops.

 

    Tin Man: "Oh no, Dorothy! Look! It's Donald Trump! I hope he doesn't bite Toto!"