Christopher Pyne, one-time Australian minister of the crown, gratuitously recommends Greenlanders embrace Trump’s desired purchase of Greenland on the basis they would be financially far better off. Hello, is everything to be valued exclusively in financial terms? Is this what human beings are all about?
But why purchase when you can just take? Trump’s suggestion that Gaza be owned by America, perhaps by himself, all structures raised to the ground and the people forcibly removed anywhere other than the US, to be replaced by the world’s newest and best real estate development, is another level of human hubris.
How good would a Trump tower be here on the edge of the Mediterranean, guests could use the newly minted Trump currency. Trump’s bumbling thought bubble, straight from his heartfelt vault of wealth and possession, has nothing to do with Israel or a future for Palestinians, it is all about real estate.
Having just closed USAID, the body that would presumably respond to Palestinian humanitarian need, it is clear these needs are to be met by anyone other than the US pocket.
The proposal puts a scythe through 75 years of agreed international policy that assumes a Palestinian state exists alongside the state of Israel.
As a Palestinian spokesperson said in response; “If Trump wants Palestinians to live in their ‘happy place’ he should ensure their safe return to homes in the state of Israel from which they were removed following partition in 1948.”
It is very hard to find words to express the horror and disgust I feel. It is gut wrenching.
How Americans voted for such a contemptible leader, (or more likely allowed him to be appointed by refusing to vote) is beyond understanding.
I am trying to comprehend the thought processes that lie behind his pronouncements. Perhaps a futile exercise, the words tumble out of a brain dominated by real estate signs.
It seems two thoughts lurk in the recess of both Trump’s and Musk’s minds. The first is that winners have the right if not the responsibility to take all. By this line of thinking Palestinians (not just Hamas) are losers and therefore have no rights. Both men consider themselves ultimate winners and therefore have the obligation to prosecute anything that serves their best interest and punish those whom they perceive to be spoilers of their ambition. In US politics, they clearly perceive themselves as winners, even to the extent of considering the Congress and Senate largely irrelevant.
In bizarre fashion, this is not even about Israel and its promotion. It is about the US and Trump’s personal aggrandisement. Trump’s nominee as US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, still awaits confirmation. He is a messianic, Zionist Christian who promulgates an “end times” hypothesis that Jesus will return when Israel controls all the land from the river to the sea. This, he believes, will promote a thousand-year period when all who believe as he does will prosper, and all who do not will perish. He supports the forced removal of all Palestinians.
But, like Trump, he is not really concerned about Israel, Israel is no more than a pawn in the grander purposes of God as understood by Huckabee. Huckabee could be likened to a Christian version of an ISIS leader. Because he believes Palestinians do not exist, their disappearance, even violent fate, does not matter in the greater scheme of things.
When you believe the winner has the right to take all, then principle, morality or consequence do not matter.
The second thought that appears to be in the minds of these two narcissistic men is that if you are not a winner, if you cannot stand on your own feet, you do not deserve any help. What is being cut from the US budget both in the US and overseas is expenditure for those without a foothold on the necessities of life. Musk uses words that imply it is not just a waste, but almost a criminal offence to render assistance that does not result in economic return. Apparently, US public servants who have devoted their lives in the service of others are now deemed to be enemies of the state.
I am somewhat surprised that Trump has so far not declared the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit to be US property. Given our acquiescence on so many matters regardless of whether Labor or the Coalition are in power, maybe he mistakenly thinks we are already part of the Stars and Stripes. In the last week or two, I have found myself cheering for China in any tussle between the two “great powers”.
In these dreadful days, it is vitally important that principle is clear, that political expediency or economic supremacy are not policy drivers.
No person has the right to take that which belongs to another. No nation, or people, have the right to railroad another nation or people.
No one has the right to decide the future of another. Freedom is not the absence of conflict; it is the capacity to decide for oneself. No one is free unless all are free.
Every human being is neighbour. A civilised nation is not marked by its wealth or power, but by its compassion for the powerless and needy.
Every passing day of the Trump presidency, the US feels less civilised. Through its power and influence, it is attempting to take much of the rest of the world down the same path.