Donald Trump has long been the protagonist, craving the limelight, basking in attention and living on the knife-edge of reality TV adrenalin rushes. It works in New York, to a lesser extent in Washington and overseas, flops like a wet pancake, attracting howls of derision, sneers and scoffing at what appear to be the antics of a puerile simpleton.
And today we have the epitome of idiocy, Trump's Western Civilization speech ahead of the G20 Summit. This speech fails from word one. In a globalized world of globalized values and globalized trade, in a globalized economy held together increasingly by multinational companies doing business in the four corners of the globe, it makes no sense at all to speak of "Western values" like some kind of an island or oasis in a sea of dictatorships, autocratic regimes and thuggish governance. These, indeed, if we look at the history book, are the true Western values.
Western values. Invading foreign lands, massacring their peoples, without any attempt to understand and enjoy the diversity of cultures, the imposition of religion with the Bible and the bullet, that swastika-like abortion, the Cross, rammed down people's throats as they were tortured by Westerners and burned alive by Westerners, as Westerners howled with laughter or curled up giggling to the percussion and melody of cracking bones and the screams of Western victims, including children.
We saw Western values as cowards in London and Paris and Washington drew lines on maps and signed away the livelihoods of peoples who only wanted to make an honest living farming and gathering and fishing. We saw Western values as people were enslaved, the Negro Holocaust claiming up to seventy million lives and livelihoods, as young men and women were torn away from their families, we saw Western values as children ran screaming after their mothers and fathers and brothers who were dragged away and chained together in the hull of a ship.
We saw Western values as the slaves were carried far away across the waters, never to see their families again, lying in a sea of excrement on the slave ships and we saw Western values as those who survived were treated like cattle, sold off to slave owners and we saw Western values as these beat and raped their defenseless victims like the sub-human sniveling cowards they were.
We saw Western values as Europe and North America interfered in every single corner of the planet, imposing friendly regimes, elevating the second most powerful group to a position of prominence, knowing that this group would support the foreign power, this being the only way to guarantee their position and we saw the horrific consequences of these endemic imbalances in the socio-economic tissue of countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
We saw the Western values in Operation Condor in Latin America where people were tortured and raped for their political beliefs, not so long ago, we saw Western values in the autocratic and Fascist regimes the West supported and the repression and terror they brought upon their populations.
We saw Western values in the twin atomic terrorist strike against the people of Japan. This was after the Japanese had presented the same conditions for surrender which were accepted after this act of terrorism, rendering it utterly and totally unnecessary. We saw Western values in Korea, where the USA and its allies murdered millions of North Korean soldiers and civilians. We saw Western values in Vietnam in massacre after massacre.
We do not have to delve that deeply into the history book to find examples of Western values. Just recently, we saw Western values siding with terrorists in Kosovo, where Albanians from the Ushtria Çlirimtare ë Kosovës, or Kosovo Liberation Army, supported by the West, decapitated Serbian civilians and perpetrated terrorist attacks against the police and emergency services while Albanian criminals were wined and dined on Capitol Hill, Washington.
We saw Western values in Iraq, where the USA and its favorite pet bedboy, the UK, breached international law by attacking a sovereign nation against the precepts laid down in the UN Charter, we saw Western values in Libya, where military hardware was again used to strafe civilian structures, where the electricity grid was targeted "to break their backs" and the water supply was bombed. And where is the war crimes trial?
And today we see Western values in Syria, interfering, placing troops on the ground without invitation, launching missile attacks without any basis whatsoever, and siding with terrorist groups destabilizing the country, raping nuns, raping little girls before and after they are beheaded, and murdering policemen, ambulance drivers and soldiers.
If these are Western values, who needs the Devil? In short, the speech of Domald Trump about Western values is the most idiotic speech in the history of Humankind. He might be a bigwig in the Big Apple, but that's where it ends, folks. Overseas, he comes across as a jabbering buffoon asking for a kick up the backside.
Photo credit By United States Army Air Force - United States Air Force Historical Research Agency - Maxwell AFB, Alabama from "History and Units of the United States Air Force", G H J Sharrings, European Aviation Historical Society, 2004. Photo credit given as from USAFHRA., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10935871
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda.Ru
Twitter: @TimothyBHinchey
timothy.hinchey@gmail.com
*Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor, editor, chief editor, director, project manager, executive director, partner and owner of printed and online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications, TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and Principe Isles; the Russian Foreign Ministry publication Dialog and the Cuban Foreign Ministry Official Publications. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. A Vegan, he is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights. He is Director and Chief Editor of the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru.