Musings: Trumpian reasoning

 Donald Trump has accused Zelensky of Ukraine of trying to start World War 3. This is quite a reasonable statement, provided we accept that Britain started World War 2 by unnecessarily declaring war on Germany in September 1939 (much to Hitler's surprise, incidentally: he had not been expecting this) and then ensured vastly more deaths by rejecting Hitler's proposal for peace talks after the fall of France in 1940. 

   By the same reasoning, Belgium was largely responsible for World War 1, by insisting on resisting the German invasion of 1914. Without this unexpected Belgian resistance, which derailed the German military timetable, the Kaiser's armies would have taken Paris within a few weeks, and the war would have been over with minimal casualties.

  One must therefore presume that, according to Trumpian reasoning, the main responsibilty for high casualties and the danger of world war in the current conflict lies with Ukraine, for not instantly surrendering to the Russian attack.

  Trump also labelled Zelensky a "dictator" for postponing elections in Ukraine, and once again, there are parallels. In 1940, Hitler would, by Trumpian reasoning, have been perfectly justified in pointing out that Churchill was entirely without democratic credentials: he had never been elected Prime Minister by the British people, and that the general election due in 1940 had been postponed indefinitely. It did not take place till 1945: the longest period without an election since the 17th century; and when it was finally held, Churchill's government was overwhelmingly defeated! 

  I wonder whether Trump had these historical facts in his mind when making his accusations. What do you think? 

 

Poem: The mask of Agamemnon

 Pale gold, thin as card, shaped to a face,

heavy-lidded eyes like cowries, and a smile.
Not a happy smile,
but rather a smirk: 

Look at me! see what I have done!

This face, not Helen's, launched the thousand ships,
burned Troy, murdered his own daughter,
to avenge an insult to the family,
to not lose face.

Then, down into darkness, unrotted in the grave,
out of sight of man for endless centuries,  
only the gods could see. To them it smiled
saying, "Because I am a hero, I chose war and slaughter, and thereby saved my face." 

And since Schliemann dug it from the earth:

this face was saved 
- though nothing else was.

 Troy was lost
and soon after, Mycenae too was lost; but this face was not lost.

Now, saved for ever

 behind bullet-proof glass
stronger than stone walls and Lion Gates,
under fluorescence brighter
than any sun of Hellas:
Agamemnon: great king
of mighty Mycenae

once more in state
immortalised in story and in gold,
smiling at the awestruck multitudes,

look at me! see what I have done! 
What more could any king desire?

pgs

History/ Politics: German elections

 This map of voting intentions in Germany has deep significance for historians. The regions supporting the right-wing AfD party correspond almost exactly with the territory of the communist former East Germany (DDR), complete with West Berlin as an island in the middle, and are also the regions that voted most strongly for Hitler in the early 1930s. Why should this be? 

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Charles Huntingdon

This is the foreword of my online historical novel. The complete novel can be read at pgvshil.blogspot.com

..............................................................................................................

 Charles Huntingdon was never a politician of the first rank, and even the great Sir Lewis Namier, in his famous surveys of Parliament in the 1760s, could find little to say about him. I knew scarcely more than just his name before the document I am publishing here came into my hands. 

   I was doing the rounds of the Cambridge colleges and the university library, conducting research into eighteenth century politics, when a young trainee assistant librarian, Ms. Whitmore, produced for me something she had found gathering the dust of centuries in the depths of what is euphemistically known as the “reserve collection”. It was a large wooden box, catalogued as having been deposited in 1775 by “Charles Huntingdon, M.P.”, with instructions that it should not be opened until after his death and that of his wife; but as far as Ms. Whitmore was able to ascertain, it had never in fact been opened since it came into the college’s possession. The box proved to contain the memoirs of the said Charles Huntingdon.

   Although Huntingdon was an obscure politician, he met many of the most important people of that period. He has left us descriptions of them, and he also casts a fresh light on the daily lives of the landed classes of his day. The most startling aspect of his memoirs, however, is that he reveals details of some extraordinary adventures in which he took part; and after reading these I can well understand why he did not want them to become widely known until much later.   

  It is for this reason that I am bringing his memoirs to the attention of the public for the first time. Some episodes, which appear to be unrelated to the main story, have been relegated to an appendix at the conclusion. With the aim of attracting a wider readership, I have modernised the spelling and punctuation and broken up the narrative into short chapters, for which the titles are entirely my own. The illustrations, which show various eighteenth century scenes, are also my choice.

  My thanks are due above all to Ms. Abigail Whitmore, without whose encouragement and advice my task would have been impossible.