From top: Vladimir Putin; Donald Trump; Dan Boyle
We now are the meat in a US/Russia sandwich. We need firstly to look to ourselves and recognise both these scoundrels – Putin and Trump – as being the same.
Dan Boyle writes:
When first I read his tweets I sniggered. Then I sneered. Then I reacted with revulsion. Only lately, and far too late into this story, have I tried to analyse them in order to understand. I don’t think I’m alone in these reactions.
An effective understanding is, I’m afraid, beyond me. I don’t hold with the view of some who support him, that he is possessed of genius. There is too much inconsistency, illogicality and incoherence, on display here to reach such a conclusion.
He is though quite skilled. It isn’t a skill born of intelligence. It is an intuitiveness that has served him well, which his messianic self confidence, fuelled by arrogance, believes will continue to serve him well. His sexual peccadilloes are an irrelevance to me. I care not whether water sports are his preference or his phobia.
I’m not possessed of sufficient fact to determine whether Mr. Trump is in the pocket of Vladimir Putin. Those whose views I respect indicate he may be. Without empirical evidence that’s a call that cannot yet be made.
What is a worry is the observable fact that Don and Vlad seem to be of one mind (Putin’s I imagine), when it comes to our common European home.
Both seem to feel that formalised co-operation, with the infrastructure that makes that possible, between the nations of Europe, is something that should be discouraged and preferably ended.
Whose endgame is this? Who benefits? Everything seems to point to the bare-chested one.
I don’t share the sneaking regard of some for the master oligarch. I see him as a thug, an autocrat, an assassin of political opponents, and an arch manipulator of truth.
Having his counterpart in Washington DC as his mouthpiece is an appalling vista. It is not a Brave New World I want to a part of. It may though be the world that have to get used to, at least for the next few years. So what is it we can do?
I’m fairly sure regular flying pickets at the US embassy by the bullhorn brigade will be particularly useless. Although at least it may keep them out of harm’s way.
We now are the meat in a US/Russia sandwich. We need firstly to look to ourselves and recognise both these scoundrels as being the same.
The EU must be reformed. In order to make ourselves stronger we need to make ourselves better. There are many inconsistencies of our own we need to correct.
We need to identify with and support civil society in the US and Russia. These are the partnerships that need to be forged if we are to begin to make a value based polity dominant, and persuasive, again.
It’s not going to easy. Putting the world to right never is.
Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator. His column appears here every Thursdyay. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle
…not since the Skibbereen Eagle has Mother Russia felt such wrath from Cork…
Did Dan refuse to give you an autograph one time when you were younger Bisted?
…in fairness, Dan seems to travel far and wide to give his ‘X’…
Well that was an unpredictable comment…..
Don’t you mean Putin the world to rights?
V good!
People mock that headline, but at least they could see when someone was acting the maggot on the international stage.
Dan, who or what are the “bullhorn brigade “?
That’s vuvuzelaist !
You’d swear Dan and the Greens were part of god’s own army sent to protect us.
Being the lesser of two evils isn’t really a political strategy worth having
Putin on the Piss !
That’d make a great musical.
Putin on the Piss, with Potus!
…will be a fantastic sequel show that’ll run for years!
Putin on the Piss, on Potus!
…the franchise gets bigger!
Guise guise guise Michael Flatley is doing the Inauguration because I guess Trump likes a bit of the old Riverdancing amirite? Guise?
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/michael-flatley-s-lord-of-the-dance-will-perform-at-trump-s-inauguration
Well, he’s not being a hypocrite like the music industry’s wagging finger. Great piece about how the music industry is being the biggest hypocrite since Beyonce took €2million from Gaddafi for a show. Or Frank Sinatra accepted a million quid to play in apartheid South Africa….
This dissing, and bullying of singers / performers who may or may not have played for Trump that you are engaging in Nigel is pure virtue signalling at its finest. Up there with Meryl’s lame speech that was about as dangerous and brave as a drone strike operator having their lunch in their US base canteen surrounded by colleagues doing the same job.
An excellent piece on the total hypocrisy of the music / entertainment industry over the inauguration here, in The Irish Times of all places….. enjoy!
http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/music-industry-hypocrisy-exposed-by-boycott-of-trump-inauguration-1.2940040#.WH_ui2ji0OU.twitter
…Trump should have asked his buddies in Tel Aviv to organise the bookings…Rolling Stones…Paul Simon…
For once I agree with Calm Person
Two stopped clocks meet in a bar…. ;0)
Interesting article.
‘Not a hypocrite like the music industry.’ Setting the bar lie for Trump then are we? ‘Doesn’t impale birds and small mammals in his larder like the butcher bird. That we know of.’
More rambling, good lad.
You get out of your depth faster than Trump at an intelligence briefing, don’t you?
The usual drab assumption and accusation via Nigel, good lad.
I’m being to think you don’t know what the word ‘accusation’ means.
Who am I dissing and bullying again?
You’re going to try denying you were having a go at Flatley now, is that it…. LOL !
Trump more than Flatley if you were being honest but it isn’t as if mocking Flatley is a new sport round these parts. I just wanted to get in with a Rverdace joke, geez.
Where would Donny be without the brave vice signalling, head pat hungry keyboard gimps defending him against all these awful people registering their disgust at his vile, racist, misogynistic & ignorant thuggery?
Leave Donny alone.
Ya gimp.
What you on about boss?
Trump has only ever stood in one election and he won.
Unlike the unelected bureaucrats who really wield all the power in Europe that Boyle loves so much.
What a muppet.
Agreed
1. So
2. Who says I love them?
3. I like The Muppets.
But you at least agree they are Muppets.
pity that the American military industrial complex needed an enemy and the growing NATO Russian cooperation post cold war was squandered.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO–Russia_relations
NATO encircling Russia doesn’t help either.
good interview with the former US secretary of defense William Perry that Dan could listen to for a broader perspective than Putin is the Devil bromides …
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/the-nuclear-brink/8107210
Can’t argue with that.
Putin wanted in NATO too, and was rejected.
He’s still a wily though.
Jayzus BS that’s some edit.
Gimp then, he’s still a gimp.
“We now are the meat in a US/Russia sandwich” – we- Ireland or Europe? Ireland, understandably, would be a grain of salt in that sandwich, while Germans are the meat on TOP of it. Germany have good business relations with Russia, securing infrastructure contracts there worth billions, nord stream pipeline to bypass eastern european democracies, and so on and so forth. Italy ain’t shoddy either. French had always been loved in Russia – before, during and after soviets. Granted, there are geopolitical and NATO related tensions, but they had always been and will be.
So, who’s ‘we’?
Imagine a world where Russia and the USA get along. How dreadful.
Is the problem here that the likes of Dan Boyle is seeing the world order change but firstly have no hand in that change and secondly not have the intelligence to understand the change?
There has been no change of order Francis. Contrived pluralities have been created. Liberal values continue to dominate. We’re living through an aberration. Even your level of intelligence should be able to work that out.
No change YET. Dan. I’d imagine you class yourself as a liberal Dan. A free tinker. A polemic even. and here we are at a time when the status quo is completely disrupted and you see it as an ‘aberration’, ‘a contrivance of pluralities’. the left is knackered as long as it thinks like this.
Go back and read On Liberty, you’ve gone wrong.
A free tinker?
Imagine a world where Russia and USA get along – great.
Imagine a world where the leaders of Russia and of USA get along at the expense of everyone else – no so great.
+1
you only think that because that’s what you’re told.