1
0

Trumps Many Shades of Contempt


 invite response                
2017 Mar 5, 9:03pm   907 views  1 comment

by marcus   ➕follow (6)   💰tip   ignore  

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/opinion/trumps-many-shades-of-contempt.html?ribbon-ad-idx=4&src=trending&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Trending&pgtype=article

Trump does not buy into the American idea. He buys, if anything, into Vladimir Putin’s macho authoritarianism and spheres of influence for the great powers. This amounts to a dramatic break with American policy as superbly articulated last month by one of the departing diplomats, Daniel Fried, who joined the Foreign Service in 1977 and served with great distinction, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe.

Fried had this to say in his parting remarks: “Few believed that Poland’s Solidarity movement could win, that the Iron Curtain would come down, that the Baltic States could be free, that the second of the 20th century’s great evils — Communism — could be vanquished without war. But it happened, and the West’s great institutions — NATO and the E.U. — grew to embrace 100 million liberated Europeans. It was my honor to have done what I could to help. I learned never to underestimate the possibility of change, that values have power, and that time and patience can pay off, especially if you’re serious about your objectives. Nothing can be taken for granted, and this great achievement is now under assault by Russia, but what we did in my time is no less honorable. It is for the present generation to defend and, when the time comes again, extend freedom in Europe.”

Donald Trump, our ahistorical Russophile president, should frame these words and hang them in the Oval Office as his first history lesson.

Fried noted America’s long-held opposition to spheres of influence, a recipe for war, and made this critical point: “We are not an ethno-state, with identity rooted in shared blood. The option of a White Man’s Republic ended at Appomattox. On the contrary, we are ‘a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’ ” And so, “that rough sense of equality and opportunity, embedded in us, informed the way that we brought our American power to the world, America’s Grand Strategy. We have, imperfectly, and despite detours and retreat along the way, sought to realize a better world for ourselves and for others, for we understood that our prosperity and our values at home depend on that prosperity and those values being secure as far as possible in a sometimes dark world.”

There could be no finer rebuke to Trump’s dangerous contempt.

Comments 1 - 1 of 1        Search these comments

1   Tenpoundbass   2017 Mar 6, 6:19am  

Trump has contempt? That's rich, stick around we're going to see how contempt is put down...

Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   random   suggestions