Veteran columnist Eugene Robinson writes in the Washington Post:
In His Puzzling Speech in Poland, Trump Addressed an Alternative World
By Eugene Robinson
July 07, 2017
WASHINGTON — … The speech Trump delivered Thursday in Warsaw’s Krasinski Square might have been appropriate when Britannia ruled the waves and Europe’s great powers held dominion over “lesser” peoples around the globe.
Damn those colonialist Poles who held dominion over “lesser” peoples around the globe. I am personally insulted by the fact that the Polish Empire’s colonies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America once existed.
Wait … What? …
The Poles didn’t have any colonies on other continents?
Yeah, well … Poles are still white so that makes them guilty of White Guilt.
Anyway, it was racist of the Poles to resist invasion by Nazis and Communists just because Germans and Russians aren’t the same color as Poles.
It had nothing useful to say about today’s interconnected world in which goods, people and ideas have contempt for borders.
Seriously, “contempt for borders” …
Did Trump slip Sodium Pentothal into the Georgetown water supply?
To 21st Century American elites, it galls them that their fellow citizens have a nice country to live in.
Trump might win again in 2020 if he can keep goading his enemies into articulating how they really feel about their fellow Americans.
Here is a picture of North of the Border: the par 3 sixth hole at Torrey Pines North, a San Diego municipal golf course. I birdied this hole in about 1975: a six iron to 20 feet, and then I’d read in a magazine article that the putt breaks six inches toward the ocean, which it does.
How can Americans deserve such beauty and serenity when Mexicans put up with crud and gunfire?
But that’s also the reason that Trump is President.
The most basic fact of American political life is that America has great borders.
We’ve got the best borders.
We’re not, say, Poland on August 31, 1939. They had bad borders.
Job Number One for any President of the United States of America is to preserve and protect our wonderful borders.
Here’s a picture of the 13th hold at Trump National Los Angeles: three iron to 30 feet left of the flag, right toward Avalon in the notch on Catalina Island, two putts.
In 2001 I had lunch with the man who paid for Pete Dye to design this golf course on land that I had cast a covetous eye upon from airliners taking off from LAX since 1976.
Unfortunately, just as he was finishing building his course, the 18th hole fell into the Pacific Ocean, requiring an 8-figure repair job.
This disaster drove the gentleman I lunched with into bankruptcy, and he eventually had to sell out to the current President.
Has anybody who has fashionable “contempt for borders” ever crossed the border between San Diego and Tijuana?
Below is a picture of South of the Border:
Having “contempt for borders” ought to immediately disqualify anybody from even claiming to speak for American interests.
“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive,” the president said. “Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders?” …
But what does Trump mean when he speaks of “the West” and its civilization? …”We write symphonies. We pursue innovation. We celebrate our ancient heroes, embrace our timeless traditions and customs, and always seek to explore and discover brand-new frontiers.”
That’s what I mean about a little learning. If the president read a few history books, he’d know that for most of the last 2,000 years, China and India were the world’s leading economic powers and Europe was a relatively primitive backwater.
He’d know that Europe rose to dominance not by erecting walls, but by opening itself to the rest of the world — its resources, products and people. …
It’s not racist for Washington to invade the world as long as the rest of America has to invite the world.
Imagine Italy without tomato sauce …
Actually, I can imagine Italy without tomato sauce. Here’s Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, c. 1485:
