Ignorant Glory

Submitted by Lindsay
Melbourne Australia!

From ignorance our comfort flows, the only wretched are the wise. Matthew Prior, 1692

(8/2017) Flags aren’t waving as SS America pulls out of the dock. There’s no water cannon, no big bands, very little press. The ship itself is all lit up, and the strains of C&W float over the silence. There’s laughter, the clink of glasses, with lots of smoke from the funnels and an enormous bow wave.

The great ship is leaving harbour for destinations unknown. The commander, brash and cocksure, is surrounded by the resplendent navigator and the gold coin purser, while the rest of the officers stare glumly into their shot glasses. No one is sure of its destination, except that it’s not going to call at foreign ports, and everyone is now sure it will cruise around the southern states selling memorabilia and nostrums.

Yes, I know you think this is a fiction, but it isn’t – it’s an allegory for what is actually taking place in your country, as seen by outsiders. That is, everyone else in the world. And, fortunately, quite a few of you who live there - which is rather amazing, seeing the power that Google and Facebook hold over your information.

This conflation of a digital free for all and a having a byte head in the White House is a first. Yes, the Brits had mad King George, and other nutcases have adorned the halls of power from time to time, but never has someone so incapable of understanding a world on the brink of meltdown ever been elected. Well, we know that democracy is a cot case, but this drives home just how much sense has also been lost. America has been dumbed down until ignorance is the driving force in popular belief, an ignorance ripe for pillaging by the heirs of the me first society.

And, it is now apparent, an ignorance in full bloom in your president. He has certain attributes, no doubt, but making anything great is not one of them. The one thing going for him, unlikely as it is, is his non-conformity. Madness for the masses, anti-bellum showmanship. It’s scary to the rest of us, this ignorant glory, and a golden opportunity for our enemies. These are not terrorists or Muslims, but the dictators who run China, North Korea, and Russia. So Putin is not a dictator? Only because he’s too wise to adopt the title, but the aims are there.

Now that’s the rest of the world, but the truly astonishing thing is the defection of the Democrats. I’m pretty sure most of us were sure they’d have mounted such a vociferous campaign of dissent by now that some of it would have reached the mainstream press, even the electronic versions. But no, not a murmur so far as can be told. Tell me I’m wrong. I’d love to eat humble pie. Yes, the Dems don’t have much power in either house, the popular press is anti, but boy, they have some prominent people in their ranks, and some high profile coverage.

There seems to be more anti Trump language from Republican members of the senate and the house than them, so I have to ask – if there is no real opposition, how can the remnants of Democracy be expected to work? And this is where the real wave of ignorance comes into its own. The majority of Americans seem to be happy with his leadership, even as it fails to deliver jobs and security. Bear in mind that the resurgence in the job market is the result of policies put in place by the previous administration, that nothing Mr. Trump has done has helped that, and that many things he has done are bearing against it.

And the majority don’t care about the rest of the world, that part of the globe over the seas that has nothing to do with them. Which many of them could not identify, happy as they are in their tweeted knowledge and facebook favourites, but it’s the rest of the world that should concern them. The top financials of the world, meeting recently in Hamburg, the G20, turned their back on his childishness and the Utube montage of his greatness. No, that’s wrong. Vladimir Putin didn’t. He smiled the condescending smile of the tiger as Mr. Trump apologised for having doubted his friendship, although even he must know of Russia’s interference in your recent election.

But there’s one thing clear about your president: He doesn’t care that America will be only great again in his eyes, nor that its role as leader of the free world has been taken off the table; it doesn’t trouble him that climate change is real, so he has no plans to try and mitigate it. It bothers him not that Mexico, his favourite whipping horse, has thumbed its nose at him, and it certainly doesn’t concern him that China is now the predominant country in influence, power and cyberfuge.

And it doesn’t seem to bother him that his own party (well, he’s no Republican, just using the name) want to disown him. He’s riding high in popular folklore, a mad masked crusader saving his people from a fate worse that death. And that will be his legacy. Death of American society, a thousand cuts inflicted by the greedy and power mad of which he is the catalyst.

If you have any wisdom at all you will, like me, be wretched in your assessment of the future. For everyone of us It is going to take a supreme effort of cooperation, unstinted work and communication to sink that ship of ignorance as we prepare for a brave new world. Bravery being the operative word. We have a big job ahead of us.

Lindsay,

Perturbed and determined in

Melbourne Australia