Saturday 6 August 2016

why don’t you pass the time with a game of solitaire?

Politics is a dirty business and all politicians, regardless of ilk, are tainted, and perhaps it is really a last ditch effort to question the mental fitness of the presumptive or label his strategy as that of an unwitting or flattered Manchurian Candidate. Volumes have already been written about the contender with no end of antagonism for the last supposed reserve of hope for America’s credibility—and probably penned under the same muckraking standards, but to us it smacks a far greater intrigue when one looks at the advisors that Trump is retaining.
Paul Manafort, national chairman of his campaign, previously served as advisor and grey eminence for presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush I as well as championing Filipino and Congolese dictators Ferdinand Marcos and Mobutu Sese Seko. Most recently, Manafort’s services had been engaged by former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who arguably by rejecting closer ties with the European Union, facilitated the annexation of the Crimean peninsula, despite testifying the opposite intentions. I wonder if a fractured US, gerrymandered down party lines, might be the realisation of the vision to making that country great again. Despite other publicised misgivings and solicitations for the intelligence apparatchik to expose whatever state secrets his opponent may or may not have put in jeopardy, Trump announced that he is rather OK with that kind of assault on territorial integrity. What if the US wanted to reclaim Cuba, the Philippines and Panama?  Then again, perhaps that is his mission-statement that appeals to his supporters—the idea of sovereignty based on oversight or old treaties is something defunct and that all’s fair in love and war.