<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div>I agree with you, Alan... I think. Though....<br></div>I was talking about this on Saturday with a good friend. I think that we have both got a little used to the situation and now were panicking a little that if Trump is removed (not necessarily a euphemism) then we'd have, not a new election, but President Pence -- who appears not to be stuck in a tantrum at a mental age of maybe 7 even if he does, as my friend reports she heard, see women as a risky temptation even across a lunch table so that he has vowed only ever to have lunch with his wife from now on. (Somehow she and I managed to part from our lunch meeting without commiting carnal sins)<br></div>War is a real possibility. Yes. You may have heard that one of our ex Prime Ministers, M Howard, assuring us that our present PM would be able to defend Gibralter just as Margaret Thatcher defended the Falklands from "another Spanish-speaking country". The government hasn't even discussed its secession from EU and they're talking about shooting at foreigners.<br></div>I do see the present USA situation hides what T might be up to. That's contained in my reference to D Adams, I think; certainly it is from the p.o.v. of Trump voters. I don't quite know what to do about it!<br></div>There was a well-structured radio programme on BBC over the weekend on the phrase "The American dream". I'll get a reference to that and post it.<br><br></div>L<br><div><div><div><div><br><br></div></div></div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 3 April 2017 at 15:25, Alan Sondheim <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sondheim@panix.com" target="_blank">sondheim@panix.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
On Mon, 3 Apr 2017, Lawrence Upton wrote:<br>
<br>
<br>
"T. isn't the problem, so much as the neoliberal/corporate/diplomati<wbr>c<br>
structure that creates this kind of brutal power base in the first place."<br>
A line in one of Douglas Adams novels comes to mind to the effect that the<br>
politician we see is there to distract us from seeing where the power is<br>
<br>
L<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Agreed! But the problem is the clumsiness of Trump. I've long felt that it would be better to have a right-winger like Spence in power, because you can fight someone with a defined position; with Trump, it's one micro- disaster after another - the news here is full of this stuff - and first, it hides whatever he might be up to; and second, one of those disasters could end up being the stuff that real war is made of.<br>
<br>
- Alan<br>
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