Thursday, July 06, 2017

Birds of a Feather - The U.S. and Poland



Donald Trump's visit to Poland was a big hit, at least with the sitting government. Trump likes Poland. It's his kind of place - for Europe at least.

What's not to like? It's an authoritarian state. It has attacked and suppressed its judiciary. The rule of law is whatever the government says it is. Poland is a hardliner on immigration, especially them Muslims. It is opposed to action on climate change and it's big on coal. It pisses off Angela Merkel and the rest of the E.U., Hungary excepted. And it spends 2% of its GDP on its military. In other words, Poland is a role model for Trump. It is what he would like to Make America - you know, Great Again.

Warsaw was the perfect place for Trump to champion unregulated free enterprise running wild.

"The West became great not because of paperwork and regulations but because people were allowed to chase their dreams and pursue their destinies."

He's got a point but it was too many people freely chasing their dreams and pursuing their destinies without regard to their neighbours and the future that has landed us in the various environmental calamities we're now confronting. It took mankind from just one billion to 7.5 billion in just two centuries. But if you don't believe any of that malarky about climate change and overpopulation and exhaustive overconsumption of resources and extinctions and loss of biodiversity and all that stuff, we're doing just great.

Update:

It's also been announced that Trump will make a drive-by visit to Slovenia, the birthplace of his third wife, Melania. Slovenian president Borut Pahor told Trump it might be time for him to trade her in for a new model.




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought Donald was a John and Melania a hundred dollar hooker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1x3hTZz4eE

The Mound of Sound said...


Unkind, Anon, very unkind.

John B. said...

Where was this attitude toward the movement of people across borders when the presiding dogs in Poland were dumping their excess labour on the international market and supressing wages for the less "competitive" slugs in selected and receptive parts of stupid "Old Europe" - those where zero-hours, ethnically exclusive hiring halls and rugged individualism rule - all the while nurturing a blossoming love affair with the chaos of economic informality at home? Wait a minute. I forgot about culture, values, patriotism, the moving fault lines of clashing civilizations and of course, the muzzie factor, without which there would be no second act. I guess the critical parts of the project fit together better than I'd thought. No wonder Trump loves them. I'll bet lots of other more muted and discreet admirers do too.

Give us Poland. Miracles do happen. Vlad can choose to either weigh in now or save it. Or it could be the perfect premise for a right proper pillow fight - something raw to medium-rare for the salivating patriots in everybody's flat-forehead brigade, and every halfwit's proof positive that "there's no there there".