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| “This might surprise you, Laurie, but I reckon Trump’s putting on a bloody impressive performance.” |
“GOODNESS ME, HANNAH, just look at all those Valentine’s Day cards!”
“Occupational hazard, Laurie, the more beer I serve, the more my customers declare their undying love!”
“Crikey! I had no idea business was so good.” Laurie squinted theatrically at the line of cards. “Is one of those from Les?”
“No, no. Les is much too sensible.”
“Whew!” Laurie glanced towards the table by the window at the back of the bar. Les raised an empty ale glass by way of welcoming his favourite drinking companion.
“I’ll bring them over”, Hannah smiled.
“Happy New Year!” Les stretched out his hand and Laurie grasped it firmly.
“And what a year it’s turning out to be! Has there ever been a blizzard of Presidential activity like Trump’s?”
“Actually, Laurie, there has, but not for more than ninety years. The first hundred days of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency were even more dramatic than Trump’s. Just as well, really, because the USA was in much worse shape in 1933 than it is now.”
“Presumably, that’s where the idea of ‘the first hundred days’ comes from?”
“That’s right. Roosevelt told Americans that the only thing they had to fear was ‘fear itself’, so he was determined to show them he wasn’t afraid of tackling the economic crisis paralysing the US economy.”
“Well, okay, that was Roosevelt’s first hundred days. What about Trump’s first twenty-four days?”
“This might surprise you, Laurie, but I reckon he’s putting on a bloody impressive performance.”
“Really? I’m gobsmacked. I assumed you’d be breathing fire and brimstone about a Far-Right coup, and branding Trump a tyrant.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, that’s what the so-called ‘Left’ are calling him. But, you won’t hear that from me. Because, in a free and fair election, Trump won fair and square. What’s more, on Election Night, back in November, he pledged to his followers: ‘Promises made. Promises kept.’ – and, so far, he’s keeping his word by turning the USA upside down and pulling it inside out. And, I’ll tell you what, Laurie, it’s not just the scale of Trump’s disruption that’s impressed me; it’s that massive change is happening at all.”
“I know, I know! And when was the last time that happened? – apart from 90 years ago!”
“Exactly! Roosevelt – an American aristocrat – understood that if the American republic was to remain the same, then everything would have to change. Trump’s vision is much more radical. He understands that if the American dream is to be resurrected …”
“If America is to be made great again …”
“That’s it. If America is to be made great again, then everything that is preventing it from being great has to be destroyed. That’s why he’s recruited Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, to ‘move fast and break things’ …”
“That was Mark Zuckerburg …”
“Was it? Sorry. But you get what I mean.”
“I sure do! And so do the elites. They all went to the same Ivy League colleges, subscribe to the same liberal ideas, and, until the Second Coming of Trump, were all supremely indifferent to the political colouration of the individual sitting in the White House. Because while presidents came and went, the permanent state – which they controlled – rolled on forever.”
“But, not anymore, eh Laurie? Not anymore. Just look at the US Agency for International Development, USAID. For decades, we lefties denounced it as the human face of American imperialism – the Kumbaya Division of the National Security State. If the CIA was Uncle Sam’s nasty cop, USAID was its nice one.”
“Like the missionaries softening up the natives before the colonists arrived with their muskets.”
“Hey, that’s pretty good, Laurie. We’ll make a leftie of you yet!”
“That’s the whole point, Les. Trump’s unleashing a revolution, tearing up the rules, repairing what’s been broken. It makes me laugh when I hear people say: ‘He can’t do that, it’s a breach of international law!’ Well, so was the invasion of Iraq – and Ukraine. The only question all the bleating defenders of the ‘rules-based international order’ should be asking themselves is: ‘Who’s going to stop Trump’s America? The Danes? The Canadians? The Panamanians? Hamas?’”
“So, Laurie, is your name down for one of the ‘beautiful’ new seaside apartments that the Trump International Reconstruction Corporation, with massive assistance from the Saudis, will soon be erecting in Gaza?”
This short story was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star on Friday 14 February 2025.
5 comments:
Laurie can’t be from Southland, or he would have said ‘Crickey Dick’.
Invercargill and area has lots and lots of flattish land some near the sea - cheaper to build an ugly concrete conurbation there than Gaza, and ship them all to shiver in the true South?
How surprising the Greens have not suggested it but like the dog with nearby pork chop, I expect their attention is focused on bigger things, auditioning as they have and are.
Charles de Gaulle, President of France, invited to Canada’s centenary, bellowed from a Montreal balcony to a crowd of poutine eating locals “Vive Le Quebec Libre!!!” , in 1967. With consequences.
TPM could invite Xi for an Antipodean do over of that, unless the Greens beat them to it. Please, beat them.
However, the Rolling Stones had ?one concert in the v late 1950s in the Athens of the South, were pelted with frosted raspberry buns and vowed never to return, calling it the A hole of the world.
This is admirable. Imagine Xi and whoever hoped to get ‘looked after’ by the CCP, received the same welcome.
Far far more good PR than any ole nuke ship freeze. ( this said for benefit of the shallow and short viewed … good things even great things are done by these, and God approves.
"Because, in a free and fair election, Trump won fair and square...."
Yes yes, of course of course, and what's all this talk of voter suppression about I wonder.........wonder.......wonder.........oh!
It's a good point you make through Les Chris. It's not what Trump does that we like that's a problem, but what he may do that we may not like. Could Americans turn a blind eye to corrupt international actions by it's government just as those in China and Russia do with the actions of their governments. The USA is so vast that many of its citizens are not aware or don't care about what happens off shore so long as it doesn't affect them. Not like this little country where most people know at least a little about what goes on in the world around them and wouldn't let our leaders get away with unjustified actions against other countries or even it's own people as has happened in China with the Uyghur people. Trump is good for the US until he isn't, and then who would stop him. Laurie may have a mind change at that point.
Actually Anonymous is new view. was mistaken entry.
Les and Laurie are old enough to have been standing in the crowd waving for Queen Elizabeth and the Prince, who stayed at Remington's Hotel in Greymouth, 1954. Imagine the scene. Flags, old fashioned faces (all thin) - 30 years past the point that Britain was any good (or meant any) to this country. Admirable sentiment if sentiment was all there was.
But it wasn't all - nonsense was believed here for a long long time.
It's a shame that the old place is being torn down. But New Zealanders do cling to unrewarding nonsense, and ignore the poetry and history that comes from here. No wonder the late Brian Turner (pace) was, from his writing, a dour man. Born that way, followed a path to his art in a land
uncongenial (although beautiful to look at) to it.
I hope Les and Laurie are not the foolish kind of low Scots dour, sipping their beers over old hatreds of misunderstanding, and that don't see the beauty.
Do Les and Laurie discuss the parallels between the rejection of the Chinese government of the New World Order (now also rejected by the new American government) and the questioning here of Ti Tiriti Uber Alles also a wet blanket that serves only few? Give Mr Xi his due - whatever his people are, they are not fools.
And will they still wave little flags for an order long gone, and put pennies in a cup on the bar to help buy a ship for the Royal Navy?
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