America first, last and all the way over the precipice

America first, last and all the way over the precipice

There are two sorts of leaders – the SE (Shining Example) and the AW (Awful Warning). Perhaps a third sort is a mixture of both and maybe that is what we mostly get. A quick review of those I have known suggests that the majority are at least well intentioned even if sometimes rather thick. We sure have an AWsome example now.

Two hundred and fifty years of industrial revolution pollution have taught us that we are well on the way to destroying the planet. The environment in which most city dwellers live – or, rather, struggle to live – is poisonous to the point of being fatal. It doesn’t happen as quickly as an election, of course. Some people live quite a long time and only spend the last, few, desperate years gasping their way to the grave.

Others, mostly poorer people in deprived circumstances, die before they can even read. Their dust bowls alternate with floods rapacious enough to defeat even the best of rescue services. That we humans are responsible for climate change is without question. Watch old movies of only thirty years ago and you see why. The roads are empty, at least relative to today. Parking restrictions are not even invented. Personal movement is very limited for most people. A few rich can travel.

Volume of people has doubled in my lifetime. Now the press of traffic is such that we are beginning to make public transport as comfortable and available as the private car. We are sharing personal possessions to maximise their availability. We are monitoring exhaust fumes in a last ditch attempt to limit the damage being done. 147 nations have ratified a declaration of intent to address the issue. The United States has said it doesn’t care.

Be very clear, this is an act of democide. The definition of democide is “the murder of any person or people by their government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder”. It is illogical, inconceivable, incomprehensible. Its earliest damage will be to the American voter. Isolating America or anywhere else is not only stupid, it is unattainable. The internet sees to that. A social order based on “my tribe at the expense of all others” is inhuman. No thinking person can see the amazing advances being made in science and technology and want them denied to other fellow humans.

Or can they? It seems they can. At least one person can, and he is called the President of the United States. Our lessons in the clever balance of power between the different political factions in the US turn out to be bunk. There is no balance of power. One man can condemn the world. Where’s the balance in that?

Mr Trump’s personal insecurity has shone through his presidential campaign and developed dramatically in his first months in office. Now it is naked. The Emperor has no clothes. Nor, soon, will anyone else. We are being stripped of our humanness. It has gone beyond role-modelling. It is now diabolical.

The world will not come to an end overnight. If the madman in charge of the most important nation on earth is not stopped it will come to an end much earlier than any of us thinks. We must stop it now. President Trump must be impeached.

Without delay.