You know me, I don't
normally do Political on this blog. I rarely make my own thoughts and opinions known – we live in such a ridiculous and childishly over-sensitive time
where it's pretty much impossible to have your own mind these days.
However...today is a
day that many of us (myself included) thought we'd never reach.
There's a lot of
articles appearing in newspapers right now that have a strangely
disorientated, confused air about them, as though the writers of
these pieces were boxers emerging from a 12 round fight where they've
just been knocked out by the champ, and the moment they've come back
to consciousness, someone's stuck a mic in their face and demanded a step-by-step analyse of the fight.
That's not quite the
case, but what is the case is that the world is emerging from
one of the most turbulent, chaotic and thoroughly horrible four years it has experienced in a long long time...four years in
which a childish, capricious, humourless, swaggering, recalcitrant
bully has been in control of one of the most powerful and influential
countries in the world – a country that is in possession of 3,800
nuclear weapons.
Those articles appear
disorientated and a little confused because many of the people
writing them really hadn't expected the human race to survive those
four years.
I remember, not long
after the results of the 2016 US Presidential Elections were
announced, the papers were suddenly full of dark, doom-laden
articles, talking about how the future of this world had suddenly
become gravely uncertain, and that a number of 'insurmountable
crises' now lay in our path.
At the very top of
each and every one of those lists, occupying the Number 1 spot, was
the new President of the United States.
It was implicit in both
the tone and attitude of those articles that most political
commentators and journalists couldn't see how we could get through
the next four years - the next 1,460 days - without this new President
plunging the world into nuclear war.
I was out walking one
morning, it was the first day of a lovely 9 day holiday, and as I
passed by a group of elderly holiday makers sitting on chairs outside
their hotel (they're always sitting out there, even during the cold months) waiting
for the driver to finish packing their luggage into the coach, my eye
fell upon the front page of one of the newspapers they were
reading – the front page headline screamed “Trump one step
from war!” I walked on, naturally troubled, and decided to pop
into a newsagent and have a look at the front page – after all, it
was a particularly lurid and loathsome red top tabloid I saw the
headline on, they might have been massively over-exaggerating things
as usual. Nope. Every front page of every newspaper in the shop said
the same thing – or variations on that theme. The US and Russia
were about to come to blows over Syria.
I remember looking at
the date – it was April 8th 2017. The new President had
been in the job for a little over 2 months and already he had pushed
the world to the brink.
After that I really
couldn't see how we were all going to survive for another 3 years and
10 months. I suddenly remembered all of the newspaper articles I'd
read back in November 2016 and came to the conclusion that they were
right – this new President really was an insurmountable crisis. We were doomed. It was only a matter of time.
It's an odd feeling
celebrating Christmas and, when it's all over, briefly wondering if
that was the last one you were going to celebrate, or if the world would manage to get to another
one before the new President did something stupid.
Because he was
going to do something stupid. We all knew it. As I said, it was only a matter of time.
It'll probably sound very strange in years to come, but
that's pretty much how I lived my life for four years. Asking myself
“Is that the last one? Will we see another of
these? Are we going to make it to the next one?”
But he didn't do
something stupid.
Well, actually he did do something stupid. He did a lot of stupid things. He also said a lot of stupid things. A hell of a lot of
stupid things. Very stupid
things indeed. Stupid and hurtful and destructive and unpleasant and selfish and nasty and mean-spirited things. He blithely retweeted messages on Twitter that promoted racism, misogyny, intolerance and division. He publicly threatened not just individuals and religions, but also entire countries with "total destruction" seemingly on a whim, dependent upon his mood that particular day...and all of this within the first year of his four years in office.
But the one stupid thing he didn't do was the Ultimate Stupid Thing. And we're all surprised by
that. Actually, if we're going to be honest here, we're all pretty damned shocked by that.
If
you look up the word 'Insurmountable' in the Cambridge Dictionary it
says “so great that it cannot be dealt with successfully”.
And so i'll
say it again - today is a day that many of us (myself included)
thought we'd never reach.
But
we did.
Let's not kid ourselves, the world is still in a mess – a pandemic is currently
ripping its way across the globe, turning our lives upside down and devastating everything in its wake...
...But one
of the problems, one of the very very important problems, one of the huge, major, unbelievably massive
problems, the so-big-it's-Number-1-on-everyone's-list problems, has finally gone.
There's a Brand New President now and, thank whoever and whatever you believe in, that he's the very antithesis of the last guy - he's kind and intelligent and thoughtful and knows about the job he's taken on and cares, not only about his own country but about the rest of the world. We
really should all be grateful because most of us thought that, by the time he got here, there'd be nothing left for him to preside over.
