The ripper effect

Submitted by Lindsay
Melbourne Australia!

The great nations have always acted like gangsters and the small ones like prostitutes - Stanley Kubrick, 1963

(5/2018) We in Australia are by now used to the bizarre way you are being governed. Government by confusion, policy by tweet, diplomacy by supposition. All these are daily news, and it’s working. Whether this is by chance or hard-headed planning is impossible to say, (no, it’s impossible to believe), but the results are the same. Mr. Trump is still there, trampling over logic, prolific throwaway lines of world shaking possibilities, covering fake news with fake news. Everyone lies but him, his deals are better because he’s the deal maker and breaker; to see his mouth curl in disdain when he flips off another member of cabinet or former friend is gut-churning, and we all want to see him fade away like the wicked witch of the west.

The picture of a very modern major moron, he has managed to get himself into the top job, protected from removal by the god-like stature the presidency has attained. A Tsar of Zany, the world is catching on to the reality that is emerging. Believe nothing, agree to nothing, sign nothing because it will be used to take advantage of you after the original proclamation is destroyed.

The reality we glean is, “I’m the gangster, you’re the prostitute, and I‘ll continue to rape and pay you. Just keep selling your honour and body while you can. It’s the only reason I let you live.’ And we have curtsied and said, ‘Thank you sir.” He has made us weak and despairing, angry and stumped.

The problem we have is that he is still nominally in charge of the world’s biggest economy, and we are expected to ask how high when the order is given to jump. The result is that China is becoming less horrible. We really love America and Americans, but Trump is so awful that we are looking for another suitor. A sane and relatively decent one who thinks before he speaks, is prepared to honour his promises and see we have equal rights.

And we have to live with the neighbors. Apart from the fact that China already owns a sizable chunk of your economy, it is wooing the Philippines, Vanuatu, much of Africa, South America and parts of the Middle East. They are using money, not armaments or diplomacy to win the biggest prize of all – world domination. Money that is used for infrastructure, tourism, education – which seems to be a gift, a vote of confidence, but may well prove to be the yoke that impels that country to pull the Chinese wagon when and if it says, OK, boys, here’s the bill. Pay now or become our province.

And we will not ever do that. Nor will you. Nationhood, independence, freedom – the basics of democracy are our right and heritage, and we will fight to the death to preserve them. We will never believe that creating refugees, but not helping them is the way to go; we will never subscribe to hiding our faiths, our disadvantaged, our migrants and our right to criticize, our right to vote, and above all to hold up our heads because we are free.

But neither will we try to impose our values others, which is where you went wrong. (Although we may be just too small for dreams of such glory.) It all began when you beat the English and became independent, but when you dropped atomic bombs on Japan it consolidated you on the road to the belief that might was always right. It has led you into some very dark places where commerce and hubris has overwhelmed sense, Dr. Strangelove has been welcomed wide-eyed into the decision making processes, and the armed services have become so influential that your economy is now dependant on them.

Unlike the British Empire, you had no thought of colonising, of setting up a public service that would ensure your values were introduced at the bottom, your laws and governments system were put firmly in place. No, you went for what you could take, even to the point of getting some countries to become American Territories. Yes, they got a kind of protection, meaning they were off limits for other nations to exploit, but the price they paid was the loss of their own values and ethnic culture – take a look at American Samoa, Puerto Rice and the other fourteen once independent countries that are classed as unincorporated territories.

But even you did not do what China is doing – giving largess in order to get the virus of subversion in place. It’s a hell of a price. China doesn’t need free trade agreements, trade wars or cartels, they will have everything without a fight. They will not ever listen to reason, (our kind at least), and so help us, they perform almost exactly as Mr. Trump, they just do it behind closed doors.

They are not afraid to grandstand, to do more than rattle a sabre or two. They just go where no human has ever gone before – the Spratleys, for instance – they build a navy that scares the pants off us, and they keep quiet. No Apprentice shows, no tweets, no grand signings, just a tiger ready to pounce. With a burning bright smile.

And with your foreign policy made ad hoc, your fortunes spent on Hawkish wars, you are now vulnerable as never before. You have been outsmarted by these yellow Orientals who have read their history and have ancestor dreams in their eyes. You have been having too good a time and your ancestor dreams were sunk in Boston harbour.

Oh yes, Why the Ripper effect? Well, that was the name of the American Air Force General who went nuts and wanted to drop atomic bombs on Russia. He was Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, that most sarcastic of black comedies. It is still an ongoing mantra, the ‘we will win’ that has been proven wrong so very many times.
For goodness sakes, stop acting like gangsters and start a serious dialogue with China. Stop wasting your money on wars and prostitutes.

Lindsay,
Suspiciously eyeing the tiger