There is not much doubt about the headline for this year's international news in the return of Donald Trump to the Whitehouse: whilst on the one hand I think I probably do understand him at least as a personality type, on the other it is clearly disturbing to many that he appears to be seeking to overturn a century of Wilsonian internationalism characterising US foreign policy. This ought perhaps not to be viewed as profound as it might seem in that international relations are arguably colder and more hazardous than at any time since the 'Bay of Pigs' with two major conflicts raging in the middle east being enough to stir even a much more stable and predictable figure than Donald Trump to strange and unusual actions: that is without any consideration of other issues such as the endless Chinese drilling around Taiwan. I suppose I do tend to spend more time following following the news than most and I think for example it is surprisingly simple assessment of Putin that he is a college nerd playing at snit's revenge. Donald Trump is arguably some kind of wannabee do gooder who was never quite popular enough for his ego and seems to have some kind of romantic obsession with recreating an idealised version of the US in his youth. I would say he has some trouble facing up to the inadequacies of oversimplified conventional causal explanations for salient social problems; it is rather more plain that he has some kind of obsession with the idea that a liberal establishment is to blame for everything. Many of course cannot simply get their heads around the fact that some problems are simply a fact of life for which there is no realistic remedy like the fact it gets cold in winter.

In pursuing his agenda at home and abroad, it remains to be seen, in seeking to emphasise presidential authority as a tool how much of his antics will prove to be bluster and what their consequences might be. He seems to be making plenty of enemies at home as well as abroad and some of the Muskrat's pronouncements are bad enough to alienate all sorts of people who want to see effective and well reasoned government.

Within the US it had to be observed, at least from without, that the Democrats either belatedly or ill advisedly changing horses so late in the presidential campaign was never going to augur well for their chances of orchestrating a second consecutive presidency. It seems a shame that this presidential election has arguably exposed a polarisation of opposing visions of society within the US which tends to coalesce into conflicting notions of the US as an extension of anglo-saxon and north western European cultures, and the US as a refuge for the huddled masses of every nation in which respect it seemed that a vision of an almost open border was one policy area that lost many key votes to Trump and the GOP. I thought it a rather amusing comment, in respect of the fact that so much of the campaign had ended up focused on President Biden's increasing feebleness as compared to question marks about Trump's character and personality, that someone had reckoned they "would ruther have a corpse for President than a moral imbecile like Donald Trump." What might seem therefore to be very much of the remark that it is early days yet and it does remain to be seen if some of his actions and statements are more like a sarcastic sort of attempt to change the dynamics, mechanics and dialogue of a staid and stale liberal establishment, than a serious attempt to implement cultural and institutional recidivism, in that eg assertions about getting coal fired power stations running again might be interpreted as a perhaps not entirely unjustified swipe at Chinese ignorance of environmental prerequisites.

I thought President Biden's closing address in which he warned of the dangers of increasingly capable AI in the hands of such powerful oligarchy highly appropriate and insightful which perhaps rather underlined some argument that physical fitness might not be such an essential quality for legislative office as moral probity. In analysing the actual facts about Trump's attempts to feign to be some sort of a benevolent dictator being clownish and contrary rather than serious about his contrived reactionary sort of buffoonery, it seems apt to point out that whilst most may know that the US judiciary is less independent than that of the UK, this story by Ed Pilkington for the Guardian on 29 09 24 for example details instances of Trumpist appointees overriding the wishes of prosecutors and at least one victim's family in bundling off scapegoats for execution on the basis of highly questionable evidence which as well as casting the returned Potus in a rather more sinister light, also unfortunately tends to signify deep rooted social problems in a divided society. This story by John Varga for the Express about the impact of US withdrawal from charitable work with HIV victims in Africa also rather undermines the suggestion of benevolence about his dictatorial manner. The extent to which the US is a fractious divided society was clearly shown when riots messily sprang up immediately that the federal government sought to address the need for measures to control Covid with the George Floyd affair painfully symbolising the apparent fact that the American social fabric appeared very vulnerable to instability: from the stories I had noted I think there were probably quite a few similar cases.

My sixth sense tells me that some of what is happening now in respect of a cooling of US relations with nations allied throughout living memory is perhaps something like a knock on psychological after effect of 9/11 rather more than something which might seem dictated by more immediately contemporary events. Notwithstanding that Wilsonian internationalism was arguably always something more like an apology from a nation with a unique historical involvement in slavery and genocide than an otherwise causally reasoned policy, many Americans feel, and obviously not without some justification, that they do contribute much toward health and defence in other nations and continents far from US shores, and the debacle of the attempt to cope with the tragic summary deaths of ordinary civilians about their working day along with large numbers of rescue service personnel, has I think perhaps inflicted deeper scars on the friendly extroversion of the American mindset than may easily be appreciated outside the US, even by those who also speak English as a first language.

This story by Rachel Leingang and Nina Lakhani for the Guardian on 19 03 25 about the repression of environmental lobbyists adds much contextual information about the energy debate in examining a judicial system much more atavistic and allied to commercial interests than most European voters would be likely to consider decent. I thought the Democrats stood on better ground in respect of environmental issues than they did on immigration; the degradation of US rivers to the point where half of them yield inedible fish is something which must offend a lot of otherwise conservative opinion. The activist Stephen Donziger in a complementary article of March 28th goes into more detail in explaining that the case is of international legal significance and not just another localised dispute over native-american rights. Mark Ruffalo's article for the Guardian on 19 03 25 focuses on the particular dangers of Polyfluoroalkyls widely used in manufacturing and known as forever chemicals owing to their indestructible nature: I believe they have recently been outlawed in the state of Maine.