Got them old WWIII blues

BC Pires writes a weekly column for the Newsday called Thank God It's FRIDAY! 

For its tragicomic existential impact, John “Cougar” Mellencamp’s fourth album – Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did — wins my all-round Best Rock Album Title. Its most serious competition comes from the Eagles’ lead guitarist, Joe Walsh, who had solo albums called The Smoker You Play, the Drinker You Get, You Bought It — You Name It and Got Any Gum?

Other front-runners might be Aphrodite’s Child’s 666, Alice Cooper’s Zipper Catches Skin, the Allman Bros’ Wipe the Windows, Check the Oil, Dollar Gas, the Arctic Monkeys’ Suck It and See, Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, Bob Marley & the Wailers’ Babylon by Bus, the Clash’s Give ’Em Enough Rope and a brace each from David Bowie (Aladdin Sane [ie, A Lad Insane] and The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars) and Deep Purple, their live Far East tour LP, Made in Japan, and the one in which they answered their detractors, Who Do We Think We Are?

But only Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks or the Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over might give Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did some competition.

At least this week.

On Wednesday, upheaving 22 years of executive diplomacy, President Jackass brought practically all those album titles, and one band in particular — the Clash — into play when he recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, shooting the notion of an East Jerusalem Palestinian capital in the foot and effectively shooting us all in the head; he might as well have asked the Arab world, a la Joe Walsh, Got Any Nukes?

Now Donald Trump was mildly amusing as a reality TV host — you couldn’t call a lummox like him a star — but, as the leader of the free world, he is pretty firetrucking hopeless; and he leaves the rest of us in a similar position; he’s more like the leader of the world into free fall.

And it is going to be a long fall; but we’ll pay for it dearly. Half a century from now, historians may trace World War III back to Wednesday’s announcement just like they root WWI in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.

And he didn’t even have to do it.

The BBC reported on Wednesday that Trump had already signed the order on Monday extending for the usual six months the postponement of any US recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, as mandated by Congress 22 years ago. It’s been a done deal, a routine nixing by the White House occupant twice a year since 1995.

Media houses around the world, flummoxed by the lummox, have been unable to discern a benefit to the Jackass from the announcement, but they could have asked me. Before his 1 pm announcement on Wednesday, I had already put up the explanation on my near-daily website posting of “The Secret Diary of Donald J Trump, aged 70 and ¾”: he was just trying to deflect some of the heat of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and his near-admission, via Twitter, of obstruction of justice.

So, when your loved one is killed by a terrorist bomb in the near future, console yourself with the thought that at least Donald Trump was convinced he had good ratings last Wednesday; we know the world is going to hell in a handbasket, but did he have to shove us all into the express checkout line?

Even if, by the time you read this, there have been no or only a few riots at American embassies in the Middle East, Wednesday’s lavish display of Trumpian self-indulgence will have serious, lasting, potentially fatal consequences for everyone in the world.

Including Trinidad.

Saintly, blessed Trinidad, remember, sent more jihadis to fight for the I-Sissies in Syria than anywhere else in our hemisphere; indeed, using the number of fighters produced per capita of the local Muslim population as the basis, Trinidad was the world’s fifth-highest I-Sissy jihadi-contributing nation; even using simple arithmetic, it was the 30th-highest.

Do you think those jihadi-returnees aren’t pining for a little holy killing? It’s a difficult habit to lose, the deliberate infliction of suffering on others; too besides, if your murder is halal, you go to paradise, not prison, for it.

Which brings to mind the other Dylan contender for best album title, his live Hard Rain, because it calls to mind his most fitting song: It’s a Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.

BC Pires is wearing full hijab and niqab – bulletproof! Read more of his writing at www.BCPires.com