There was a moment in my life when I talking to a woman. I loved her and I had since I was a teenager but somehow things just hadn’t worked out and, well, there was this moment and I…
It’s very hard to explain without writing a novel but there was a chance that we could have ended up in a relationship were it not for the fact that I announced that I still felt the same way that I did when I was a teenager but she’d just got out of a longish relationship and my declaration was just a bit too intense and… Anyway, it was a temporary disaster but many, many years later she looked me up and we ended up friends on Facebook so it wasn’t all bad…
I bring this up because I’d always thought that I could have done better and if I had my time again, I’d have handled it better and not announced my feelings in such a way that it left her looking at me like I’d just made a nasty stain on her parents’ expensive carpet…
Fast forward about ten years and I have a situation where I know that the worst thing I can do is the same thing, that my best course of action is to just be calm and keep my cards close to my chest…
Again, it would take a novel or several history books to establish why there’s any similarities between the two moments and even then I suspect not everyone would see them…
All of which brings me to my thoughts on preventing World War Two…
“Peace in our time,” says Chamberlain.
How silly was old Neville, we now say.
We got Trump to back down on the tariffs, we now say.
Godwin’s Law, we now say, you can’t compare Trump to Hitler.
It’s only tariffs, we now say, it’s not like he’s invading other countries. Ok, he did kidnap a leader but that leader was a dictator and he didn’t invade, he just took the leader and announced that he’s running the country. He’s only threatening to invade Greenland and he’s backed off, so peace… And he’s starting that thing where you can pay a billion dollar and be part of his “Bored of Peace”…
Ok, ICE officers may be shooting the odd person here or there, but if they didn’t want to be shot why were in the street when we know that people in the street are just asking for… Anyway, one of them had a gun until they took it away but they weren’t to know that a man face down with several ICE guys on top of him wasn’t actually going to pull a gun and throw them off and shoot them… Besides he was standing near a car and we all know that a car can be a deadly weapon and there’s no Second Amendment right to a car, just a gun but not if you’re using a phone while the gun is in your holster…
And these illegals and people who are bringing drugs into the country… no, trust us, they are… they need to be taken away without trial because it’s all these rights and courts and laws that are stopping us from enforcing law and order.
Look, this is not a concern. Trump is not Hitler. Hitler tried to take control of the country by force and January 6th was just a group of people trying to get in to Congress to get a souvenir or two before the VP was hanged…
Trump always chickens out, doesn’t he… it’s all just the art of the deal…
Anyway, if we had our time again, we’d know how to stop World War Two. We’d know how to stop the concentration camps and the book burning and the loss of freedom and the secret police…
And I’d know not to do the same thing with the second woman because I’d learned from my mistake and it just seems inconceivable to me that I didn’t know better and that I wouldn’t try to tell someone something that they didn’t want to hear.
Ah, of course, there’s knowing. And then there’s doing…
Naughty Michael ….. Putting an intuitive Rossleigh post as the lead article. A well deserved position, without a doubt …..constructing a suitable reply does shorten my time available for other excellent AIMN posts.
However, the reply on this occasion is straight-forward ….. the only way to defeat bullies is to stand with them toe to toe and beat them into the ground.
TACO Trumpery is a geriatric, demented, self-centred, multiple bankrupt, serial sex offender, convicted felon and PPOTUS (Pederast Protector of the United States), and a bully who only understands strength.
If the Australian government was serious about any peace objective in the world that currently involves the supply of US manufactured armaments to one or both sides, then they would withdraw from the USUKA sub debacle and expend those funds on decentralisation, regional social housing, and establishing a Universal Basic Income (UBI) Scheme as in Canada.
Australian government staffers must look outside the Canberra bubble and see that the world is different to their perception of Australia as a vassal state to the now fascist USA.
Meanwhile we look forward to the promised but not delivered Epstein files that every possible impediment to their release is being implemented.
I care not about the Epstein files, but I agree with every thing else you have said. Labors continued support for Trump and his administration is to be deplored.
AUKUS’ is Trumps greatest con, we paid France for subs we never got, we paid the UK for the games we gave away and now we are paying Trump to protect us from what?
I see we, reportedly, just forked over another $1.5bn for the AUKUS project, money that, as Jonangel points out, could be put to much better use domestically. To my knowledge there has never been public or parliamentary discussion about the AUKUS agreement, and the decision to commit this vast sum of money to a chimera (not the Greek mythical one). Is there a way this incredible gaffe can be taken to the High Court to test its legitimacy. Surely no government can be allowed to just disburse such huge sums to foreign governments without any accountability? Is there a billionaire out there willing to take this on?
“The only thing we learn from history, is that we learn nothing from history,” attributed to philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Well, I don’t know if you will agree, however this English chap makes some sense….
Why NATO’s Trump-Crisis Is Splitting Europe In Half
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz07lTLyWbg