Doing As We Say, Not As We Do

BEFORE THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION against their British overlords, many prominent colonists, among them Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, opined that the London government was trying to reduce the colonies to a condition of enslavement. Jefferson and Washington were certainly in a position to have an expert opinion on slavery. Slave masters themselves, albeit lenient ones, fretting about the unlikely possibility of themselves being reduced to bondage by someone four thousand miles away. That's rich. That's paranoid. And its an example of how people see the world, and the threats it harbors, according to their own behavior and experiences in treating others. Thomas Jefferson was nothing if not a hypocrite but, you gotta love a man who catalogued ever insect which landed on his Madeira. In point of fact, the British imperialists administered its colonies quite leniently by the standards of the day, and by historical standards. Even more humorously, in the long list of grievances enumerated by Jefferson in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, is that the king of England allowed the slave trade to flourish in the colonies; essentially, that his majesty, in so doing, allowed or even required Jefferson and Washington and their social class to own slaves, thus burdening them with an immoral lifestyle. Rich indeed. They had the good sense to strike it, but the "all men are created eaual' part stands testiment to this day of the power of compartmentalization. We fast forward to present day politics, and we see Trump, tweeting in all caps, threatening to unleash hell itself upon Iran if they ever threaten the United States again. A threat to retaliate against a threat. American hypocrisy springs eternal. Then, there was something known as the "Monroe Doctrine", a bold American threat to Europe to remain aloof from western hemispheric affairs, emboldened by the revolt of Spain's colonies south of the Rio Grande. now, we seen China, insinuating itself into central America, dealing to build its own competitor to the Panama Canal. We haven't heard Trump tweeting anything about that enterprise. America threats are hollow. The American president is a real bad ass seated in the back seat of a limo, smart phone in hand, far from the middle east. Iran knows, we know, the world knows, that the Iranian government can do all the blustery threatening it likes, and there aint a damned thing Trump is going to do about it. he hasn't the support, and we haven't the political will to fight the mother of all wars. Trump has more urgent concerns, in particular , involving the apparent willingness of his former attorney to stop taking bullets for the don, and to start some serious talk with the feds, concerning arrangements with foreign powers.