When Donald Trump won the White House for the second time, I was not unhappy with the result in spite of his evident character flaws so blatantly – even proudly – on display. I agreed with many of the things he attempted to do in his first term and the alternative candidate was so much worse.
The credit Trump accumulated in my mind was squandered yesterday in his meeting with Ukraine’s President Zelensky.
Even during Trump’s first term, he struck me as a character extracted from a comic book; a cardboard cutout, two dimensional, a Marvell hero or villain, depending on your viewpoint. If I were to compare Trump to a character in literature, it would be Rex Mottram in Brideshead Revisited. Here is Mottram’s wife’s assessment of her husband:
“He wasn’t a complete human being at all. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally developed; something in a bottle, an organ kept alive in a laboratory. I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a man pretending to be whole.”
One could argue that Trump’s arrogance, braggadocio, pomposity, and hyper-inflated ego are all part of the package, as is the frequent nonsense he spouts with such relish. After all, it’s the end result that counts. I probably did say that to myself; but no more.
The pilgrimages foreign leaders have been making to the Oval Office remind me that in the exercise of raw power, nothing ever changes. Just as weaker kings used to bring offerings to stronger kings to appease them, so they continue to do so. Kier Starmer’s was the most nauseating, particularly when he produced the Letter From the King. Trump lapped it up.
Zelensky’s visit was very different. He didn’t grovel enough. He was insufficiently grateful for the beneficence of the dominant super-power. He didn’t say thank you enough.
When Zelensky attempted to make his case in a language that was not his native tongue, he was shouted down, bullied and ejected.
Quite possibly Trump’s attempt to come up with a peaceful solution was genuine; perhaps Zelensky should have abased himself more thoroughly. Either way, what we witnessed was the exercise of raw power of the strong over the weak.
Although one probably shouldn’t apply this to nation states, Malcolm Muggeridge had a point when he used to say “You can have love or power, but you can’t have both”.
Peter Hitchens was correct in this article published today:
Well, at least the silly myth that America is the world’s kindly sugar daddy has been killed off forever. I do not like Donald Trump and I feel quite sorry for Ukraine’s President Zelensky. But Friday night’s White House melodrama will be good for the world, if only we heed it. And if you think nothing like it has ever happened before, you are gravely wrong.
It is indeed a wake-up call for Canada and Europe. The US is not our friend; nation’s do not have friends, they have allies; sometimes the allies are rather disagreeable regimes. Whether the US is Canada’s ally remains to be seen; either way, we can no longer depend on the US to be our sugar daddy.
