When I raised the question in this blog November 9 (see
http://gordonfeil.blogspot.ca/2016/11/saint-hillary-and-typhoon-trump.html)
about how long it would take Donald Trump to retreat from his promises, I was
thinking months. I had no idea that in less than a week he would be
back-pedaling so fast that it looks like he is on a racing bike with multiple
reverse gears. So now he thinks Bill and Hillary are “good people” and he doesn’t
want “anything bad” to happen to them. And he now recognizes that the USA has
obligations to NATO. And that wall between the USA and Mexico? Turns out it could be a fence…..as if they
don’t already have that.
I can’t fault him for discovering some common sense,
but it is troublesome that he managed an electoral win with promises that
appear now to have just been rhetoric.
Those of you who are familiar enough with medieval
English history might be reminded of that weathercock, Henry III, and his
fickle father, John Lackland. John died in ignominy after a turbulent reign.
Henry spent 56 years on the throne (a reign exceeded in English history
only by three other monarchs), and showed that no matter how feckless and
unstable a king is, if he stays on the throne long enough, he will eventually
become known affectionately as “the good old king”. And just as those ancient
reigns were marked by general public stress occasioned by the unpredictable
behavior of a country’s leader, I wonder if we will see something similar in
the USA during the Trump presidency.
Of course, Trump doesn’t have the audacity (believe it
or not) of John…..who as a teenage prince visiting Ireland at the behest of his
father, Henry Fitz-Empress, pulled the beards of Irish chieftains. And as a
king he often tried to belittle his nobility. He made the mistake one time of casting
aspersions on the character of the Duchess of Pembroke, wife of William the
Marshal of England. At this time the Marshal family was the wealthiest in the
Kingdom, and William, perhaps the greatest warrior in history, had fought in
several hundred jousting tournaments and had never been unseated. William, “The
Good Knight”, 66 years old at the time of the king’s insult, challenged the
king to combat and allowed that the king could appoint any two champions to
fight the Marshal simultaneously in his place. The king was unable to find
anyone willing to fight the Marshal. But I digress….such happens sometimes
when I am writing late at night.
In the case of Trump policies, backtracking feels like it will lead to better things. At the very least reconsidering the policies to make them more feasible, and less controversial, can only do good. Though, as always, a balance has to be struck. Also, John sounds like a real character.
ReplyDeleteWhen someone is described as "a real character", I think that they probably are entertaining and not totally narcissistic, double dealing and cruel. John has come down in history as a treacherous villain, but he seems to have had a close family life and he was well educated for that time.
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