K1 – Koo, the world is in trouble oh!
K2 – Why do you say that? Hasn’t the world always been in trouble? Suez….
- 1956!
- ….
- 1956!
- Oh that’s enough! Right now, we have Yemen, Libya, Syria… Iran! ……Are you going to recount all of that?
- The trouble I am talking about right now is not a shooting war.
- Are you talking about President Donald Trump?
- Yep!
- Well, he hasn’t done anything crazy?
- No! It’s what has been done tohim that’s worrying me.
- Ho – I know what you’re referring to. So, a member of his staff in the White House writes an anonymous article in the NewYork Times saying that people in the administration have formed a “Resistance” group to sabotage his bad policies? Does that mean the end of the world?
- But Koo, put yourself in Trump’s place. Right now, everyone in Washington is trying to guess the identity of this “Resistance” guy, right? If you were Trump and a policy paper landed on your desk, what would be your instinctive reaction?
- It would be to wonder whether it is from the “Resistance” people! I’d wonder whether my Chief of Staff [is it him?] had placed it before me for my signature because the policy paper is NOT in my interest!?
- Ahah! So he calls the Chief of Staff and spends one hour trying to trick him into saying something that can betray his identity as….!
- Gee! And when the Chief of Staff goes back to his office, heasks for the names of every official who had an “input” into the paper!
- “Could it have been so-and-so”? (Don’t know!
- “Or them-and-they?” (Don’t know)
- You get what I’m saying? As the fear of being the object of the guessing game spreads, papers that should have been dealt with in five minutes take five Or are thrown away altogether! Who’s to know? Safety first.
- Everyone becomes afraid.
- If you take a “line”, you may be a “Resistance Agent!”
- And if you don’t take a “line”, you may be trying to cripple Government business by inaction, just to make Trump look bad!
- Meanwhile, departmental, and — especially — diplomatic communications, pile up. That message from Angela Merkel, is it her own original idea or has it been slipped past her by the international collaborators of the “Resistance Movement”?
- What about that pop star guy from France?
- And that woman in Great Britain who is so hungry for allies that she went and danced an arrhythmic number with school children in Cape Town?
- What about that one from Putin?
- Now, that would be extremely dangerous to ignore. It could have something new to say about the Mueller investigation?
- But would it be genuine?Couldn’t “The Resistance” inside the State Department doctor…..?
- Koo, the “Resistance” has won the battle. When everyone is afraid of everyone else in an organisation, that organisation becomes
- And when an organisation becomes paralysed….
- It neglects to act, even in its own interest!
- That’s why I said the world is in trouble. The Mexican trade deal; the Canadian version; neither may be opened when it reaches the desk of POTUS for signature!
- Even if it’s opened, POTUS might suspect that the American negotiators have pulled a fast one on him behind his back. On the instructions of the “Resistance” of course!
- Koo, do you know the saying, “When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold”?
- Yes, of course.
- Well, doesn’t America control the IMF?
- It does.
- The World Bank?
- The United Nations?
- America pays most of the UN’s bills, doesn’t it?.
- And Wall Street’s power ….?
- Hey – be careful there! The Chinese ….
- Ho! The Chinese don’t want to confront the American financial system. Yet!
- Hmmm! But they can complicate matters for Wall Street?
- Well, if you put it that way, then I can see what trouble any paralysis in Trumpland can bring to the world economic system….
- But even that is not the real trouble I’m worried about.
- Eh?
- Well, you know that Trump believes that the media in the US have been trying to bring him down with “fake news”?
- And you see how the article of the “Gutless Resistance Man” was published almost at the same time as account of craziness in the White House by Bob Woodward of Watergate fame, in a book called Fear?
- Yes?
- Now, when a neurotic guy begins to see “corroborative” attacks on himself in the media, what do you think his conclusion will be?
- Oh, I see! Plot! Yes, he smells a plot! A conspiracy!!
- Yes – in Ghana in the 1960s, we used to have a charge incongruously called “a conspiracy to conspire!”
- So Trump will consider every word written against him to be part of aconspiracy to bring him down by “fake news.” But since his mind can’t operate in a vacuum, actual “fake news” will rather be the source of his information.
- Gede! If some red-neck nutter in Trump’s Deep South catchment area Tweetsthat African-Americans are arming themselves to march on Washington, Trump will believe it and call out the US Army?
- You bet!
- Or that European Governments are about to attack Ukraine or Hungary…
- Okay – I surrender! But tell me — if Trump were to give an order to his Generals that they considered irrational, could they refuse to enforce it?
- OYIWA! [Right you are!] That’s the 1 trillion-dollar question!
By CAMERON DUODU