Trump, I Was Being Sarcastic. He He He!!!

Nah, the Scots will do that to keep the English out

 

I don't support either side of the U.S. election and I'm not entitled to, but I can have my own opinions.

What I saw - from the outside - was a horrendous campaign of insults that split a nation.

Below are some extracts from an 'independent' journalist.

"But even if this seismic shockwave doesn’t signal either the sky falling in or the start of a bright new American era, the result was, to use one of The Donald’s favourite phrases, huge. It is, in fact, a total game changer.


In decades to come, historians will still bicker about what has been perhaps the most poisonous, toxic and stupid election in living memory. They will also be bickering over the same vexed question: how did a man who was already unpopular with the public and who boasted precisely zero political experience beat a seasoned Washington insider who was married to one extremely popular president and who had worked closely with another?


The answer, ultimately, is in the question. History will dutifully record this as a Trump victory, which of course it is. But it was also more than that, because this was the most stunning self-inflicted defeat in the history of Western democracy."

"The fact that Hillary’s main cheerleaders in the Irish and UK media still haven’t realised where they went wrong is instructive and amusing in equal measure. They still don’t seem to understand that by constantly insulting his supporters, they’re just making asses of themselves. One female contributor to this newspaper said Trump’s victory was a “sad day for women.” Well, not for the women who voted for him, it wasn’t."

The rest of the long feature was a diatribe against both sides.

On the subject of comparing the U.S. and Russia:-

The political systems are so different that there aren't really proper points of comparison. My thoughts are coloured by personal history and current observations - not a good starting point.

In Russia there is more of a dictatorship with the leader being supported by the apparatchiks and their masters. To live there and criticise them is a constant danger - not something I would like to have to put up with. There are good points as well. These have been personal observations.

The personal history is more in the past but gets in the way of seeing the more modern good things. An extremely potted history (seeing that thousands of books have been written on the subject and they contradict each other) from people who lived through the upheavals:-

The country, under the Tzar, was virtually a dictatorship with very strict rules of what could, or could not, be done by the 'peasants'. It was very oppressive but at least the people knew what was happening. Then came the Revolution. The army was sent in to supress it with lots of deaths. Eventually the revolution succeeded with the country fracturing itself and fighting wars against each other. The Bolsheviks end up winning and grant freedoms to the people - which didn't really turn out to be freedom. Just the people at the top changed and those in the middle and at the bottom tended to change places.

Oppression ended up as the order of the day (so what's change?) with even tighter controls and more minorities being oppressed than during the time of the Tzars. So a good ousting of the top was replaced by nothing better and sometimes worse.

Control nowadays is with a different group but there's still fairly tight controls of what you are allowed to 'think'.

One of my grandfathers was a soldier in the army of the Tzar. He witnessed atrocities as well as good things. He then became a soldier under the Bolsheviks and witnessed even more atrocities. The army deserted in droves but he still remained, for a while. As he was from a minority that was being severely oppressed (family members being taken by the authorities and never being heard of again) he was also going to desert but was helped by his senior officer. He was given official compassionate leave 'because his wife was very ill' and a travel pass. They escaped the country but they never heard of any of the family again but heard, 20 years later from someone from their village, that most of the village had been taken away and either were shot or put in ghettos.

 

Most of the times I have seen Trump giving a speech or acting his natural self it has sent my stomach churning. But, I have to say that, having seen him make a speech whilst standing alongside Theresa May, it was the very first time that he looked reasonably sane, speaking in a tone and way that I have never seen him do before. He's been signing Executive Orders by the dozen, but he will have great difficultly in getting most of them approved by the Senate and Congress as a lot of Republican Politicians don't like him, trust him, or support him.

 

I agree that his speech was much more statesmanlike and I think that he will work his way into the job with guidance from some of the more experienced politicians. He should soon learn how far he can go with things as there are a lot checks and balances within the system.