A Wing... It was there Just Now!
QUOTATIONS
A Wing... It was there Just Now!
History is a lamp to the darkness of the present.
Countless people, down the centuries, have asked about the qualities and attributes of the office of the President of the United States of America.
In 1790 John Adams wrote:
His person, countenance, character, and actions, are made the daily contemplation and conversation of the whole people.
Thomas Jefferson commented that:
In a government like ours, it is the duty of the Chief Magistrate, in order to enable himself to do all the good which his station requires, to endeavour, by all honourable means, to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people.
John Meacham, writing in Time, on the eve of the second anniversary of the 45th Presidency, reports:
It's clear that Donald Trump has no compelling interest in leading what the founders thought of as "the whole people."
President Harry Truman observed:
You can't divide the Country up into sections ... and you can't encourage people's prejudices. You have to appeal to people's best instincts, not their worst ones.
Meacham again observes:
To Trump, the Presidency is a reality show.
Meacham then chillingly observes:
What can we do in an era of rising white supremacy when we have a President who not only refuses to curb his sulphurous rhetoric but who threatens, as he recently directed, to "tone it up"?
Trump is determined to be a force for division, not for unity. He has no apparent interest in rising to the historical moment. To him, the presidency seems to be a reality show - a lark in which narcissism and nationalism are inextricably intertwined.
President Woodrow Wilson once observed:
The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can.
These quotations are all within an article written by Jon Meacham entitled "When Leadership Fails" and appears on page 30 of the UK edition of TIME dated November 12, 2018.
Ten months on, there is even greater stridency. Democracy is being pulled every which way, and populism and nationalism at times, reach a fever pitch, even here in the UK.
I am always loathed to draw comparisons with Nazi Germany. But growing up, as I did, in the long shadow of World War Two, I am only too aware of the "sulphurous rhetoric" of Adolf Hitler; of a man deranged, when faced with criticism, who instead not only promised, but actually did "tone it up", and with devastating consequences for millions.
And thus we come to this present hour, this present day, a year on, this Monday morning, September 28, 2020 …
IT IS COLD, IT IS STARK.
Liberty and Freedom, the great bastions of America have departed. A vain little man, one wont to pontificate, in love with the sound of his own drawling voice as he stands at the podium, or peering down from the lofty bench wherewith he feels it an important place to seat himself, waxes lyrical and warns President Obama that February 2016 is too close to the Elections in November of that year to make a nomination to the Supreme Court.
Four years on, this vain man, looking a lot smaller now, but whose voice, wobbly, is still in love with its pontificating accent … is strident. Donald Trump is, he demands, perfectly entitled to nominate a candidate, and what’s more, he, Mitch-Boy, will make sure that his party will vote for that nomination.
America long ago lost the respect of world opinion and the general public. Superpower it may be, but for how long? Wherever we look, America is in retreat. United States, but for how long?
It is incredible. I think back to the newsreel footage, to FDR over four administrations, to JFK, to RR. Always, there was the supreme dignity of that high office. I saw it still with President Obama and with President George Bush and President George W Bush.
Can that supreme office still be the same? Can the grandeur of The Oval still hold? Goodness! Even the celebrated TV series West Wing reassured us all of the dignity of that high office.
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But now?
I do not give much credence to the literal interpretation of Scripture, but I do recognise the beauty in the writing down four Millenia. So in that first, and most famous allegory, we have the LORD walking in the Garden in the cool of the evening.
Adam? Where are you?
I was hiding.
Why are you hiding?
We saw that we were naked.
Who told you that you were naked?
And having listened to the reasoning, He asked that most fearful question of all …
WHAT is THIS you have done?!!?
On this cold October morning, yes, Autumn turns the chill over here in the United Kingdom, and I find myself, and many others like me, thinking that same question as America receives the chill of Fall …
WHAT is THIS you have done?!!?
Or in my own language,
What on earth were you doing? What on earth possessed you all? How could you have put the entire Free World at risk, just like last time???!
14 October 2020
Five Years On
October 2025
No matter the time, day or night, the BBC News Channel is simply an unwelcome American satellite relegated to transactional status under its present leadership in order to secure a deal, air time, that has the hallmark of a fag packet deal in a gaudy down town New York golden dome night nightclub.
This week Americans have held protests nationwide. Their placards say it all. No kings.
Last Thursday, a former conservative secretary of state and leadership contender, eloquently expressed the current impasse. This was reinforced by a former American diplomat… reader, diplomats are several steps removed from their political masters. They speak differently, they know every nuance of every language with which they work.
We are used to politicians ‘playing dirty’. Then we move into the diolomatic arena and find a different game. Every word is measured. Everything is understated. In my history class I learned that the language of the declaration of war on 3 September 1939 by the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain ~ and I have to tell you now that this country is at war with Germany ~was not that which had been usedat the highest level between the british Government and the Third Reich. Rather, the language of diplomacy sufficed to deliver this warning of what would follow… His Majesty’s Government is displeased in the extreme. The principle of in extremis. Rarely used, and when used, conveying a sense of horror at what will be unleashed on all sides.
Thus, when a former highly respected American diolomat explains in what we term here, ‘high english’ or the ‘King’s English’ - what for the greater part of my life I knew and learned as the ‘Queen’s English’ - that potus is on a path of destruction, it took me several moments to think of the noun enormity of that nun by a diplomat, then we have reached a very, very dangerous point along life’s road.
Last evening, as if to indrectly emphasise this, I saw an aerial shot of the White House.
That’s odd. Oh no. Has the White house been hit by terrorists? God almighty. The whole east wing has gone!
Of course, in seconds I read the ticker-tape caption beneath… Trump demolishes the east wing in order to build a massive ball room.
What on earth is in the heads of America’s president and first lady?
A day later and I still have no idea.
I suspect it is too late.
The American People chose the apprentice. America is falling apart. Tyrants sidestep the law by declaring groups to be terrorists. This has always been so. This removes any outreach of the Rule of Law. People are murdered. But because they are in a proscribed group, their deaths are not counted as murder. The next news item was the GPS footage of the drug dealing boat run being taken out, and the BBC America presenter confirming that six people had been killed.
Then followed the presenter’s interview with a former lawyer. The lawyer was direct, blunt and to the point. It is murder. Equally so, one cannot call such an act in territorial or international waters an act of war if there is no war. There is not. In the mind of America’s king, yes.
It hss been customary to talk about the peace dividend. Well, I tend to regard that as well and trule milked dry. It is now of no consequence. We have moved on. Two nights ago, watching again Five Came Back on Netflix [1], the collosus of President F D Roosevelt, his mindset, his intelligence, his ability to lead all Americans was even more pronounced.
I used to greatly respect the White House and the oval office. The mystique has been trodden into the ground by one deluded man and his henchmen and henchwomen. We learned of his contempt last Friday, throwing away from him the map showing the battle lines in Ukraine.
Donald trump is Putin’s man in the White House. The world can see this. Alas, Americans cannot.
25 September 2025
All Rights Reserved
Liverpool
© 2020-2025 Kenneth Thomas Webb
[1] The Netflix documentary series Five Came Back is about five legendary Hollywood directors—John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens, Frank Capra, and William Wyler—who left their successful careers to make documentaries for the U.S. military during World War II. The series, narrated by Meryl Streep, explores how these filmmakers documented the war, what they experienced, and how the conflict changed them and their subsequent work.
First Written 2020
