Trump quaking

FOR NINE blissful days, I did not once think about Donald J-for-Jack--s Trump. That transformed a period in which I spent two days in a plane, train, airport or train station — 22 of those hours straight in the same clothes — into a proper holiday. I’ve spent the last two days grinning over Fat Nixon beginning to get his just deserts.

The best thing in years — or at least since November 9, 2016 — was Tuesday’s guilty plea by Michael Cohen, who is to Donald Trump what Silvio Dante is to Tony Soprano! Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s same-day conviction also puts another nail in Trump’s coffin, with three more — Michael Flynn, Richard Gates and George Papadopoulos — soon to be hammered.

Even if the Republicans will never bury the fat firetruck.

And now I’m thinking that US colleges don’t value the humanities any more.

American universities for years have tailored their curricula to produce the graduates needed by huge corporations. The world might be better off with more poets and painters, but capitalism-gone-wild needs more MBAs and marketing men, so guess which faculty gets the budget? The McDonald’s University model is dominant, with the Ivy League simply being more coy about handing over its honour. Institutions that were developed to serve higher thought are now firmly committed to higher profits.

What relevance has history to them? Why contemplate yesterday at all when you could be working towards today’s bottom line?

But anyone who thinks back to 1978 might recall the sign under which, in a clearing in the jungle in Guyana, an insane American preacher administered lethal Kool-Aid to 918 people, all fatally demonstrably loyal believers: the quote, on a blackboard in the meeting hall/church room of Jonestown, from the philosopher George Santayana, read, “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”

It seems Americans have forgotten Germany, 1929-39.

There was no one in 1945, not even his highest ranking and most loyal officers, who did not know that Adolf Hitler was completely insane.

Germany’s — and the world’s — problem was that so few would admit it in 1929-39; or even discern it. Even after Kristallnacht; even after the yellow stars (and the pink stars); even after the trains rolled into the stations and the smoke rose out of the chimneys.

In 1939-45, Adolf Hitler had become so ruthless a dictator in Germany, it was difficult to recall that he had taken power constitutionally just a few years before. The weakness of the opposition party, the economic disaster of hyperinflation after the American recall of debt after the stock market crash in 1929, the rabid rampant enthusiasm of a Nazi party driven by its conviction of white supremacy — and, crucially, the deliberate, self-interested support of the richest people in Germany — led president Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor in 1933. Rich Germans and the political ruling class thought Hitler was a fool who could be controlled.

Well, he showed us all.

If, that is, we remember.

Consider today’s fool, and the danger he poses.

Manafort’s conviction and Cohen’s guilty cop on Tuesday prove — beyond a reasonable doubt — that Trump’s closest cohorts are criminals; and that gives the world hope that there will be more Americans who know right from wrong on November 6, 2018 — the date of the mid-term elections — than there were Germans on February 27, 1933 — the date of the Reichstag fire, Hitler’s most brazen act in securing power, the equivalent of Trump’s strenuous attempts to stop the independent counsel. We know already the danger of unquestioning loyalty to the wrong man in Germany, 1933, or Guyana, 1978; and we see the danger of a Republican party that stands, in relation to its current leader, in the same position that the Nazis of Germany stood to their leader.

They have been openly, proudly, drinking their Kool-Aid since November 9, 2016. And Edmund Burke reminds us that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

If there are not enough decent Americans to save the world in November from this raving madman, we will not need a soothsayer or seerman or to know what will happen to America, and the world, in the near future. We will either recall the fairly recent past.

Or repeat it.

BC Pires is hoping for the best but preparing for the liverwurst.