For many reasons, I am deeply grateful for my longtime English friend Roger Carey. This piece that Roger wrote is brilliant, spot on, and searing in its depth and truth. I appreciate this "European opinion"! These are the facts that need to be read and shared far and wide.
So I share my deepest thanks to you, Roger, and to all of the wise truth-tellers in our midst — something essential to the welfare of us all. Without seeking and absorbing the nailing it kinds of facts illuminated here — rather than the 1984 in 2025 double-speak — we are left with the horrors and devastating consequences of the prolific lies and propaganda of our times. May we all be inspired to speak up, speak out, and tell the truth. Again and again and again.
And meanwhile, truly, and to everyone — Will you vote for them again? — Molly
By Roger Carey
WE should have suspected something when we realised JD Vance's autobiography was, well, a bit more selective than most autobiographies. Middletown, Ohio, is hardly hillbilly country. Family life was not quite the way it's portrayed. The hardscrabble was less imposed, and more self-inflicted And when you put the book down — as I did, many weary times — you realise it isn't an elegy to dignity in poverty, or noble conduct in hard times. It is, amongst other things, a book of ego, a long-winded sneer at those who just can't be bothered to better themselves. Those who just won't pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Like I did, he suggests.
Vance is not, of course, the author of the great unfolding disaster that is Trump II. That's down to those shady brains behind Project 2025. Vance, Hegseth and, still lurking in the shadows, the boy Musk, political pubescents all, are just the useful idiots making Project 2025 a reality. Although, even though they know not what they do, we shouldn't forgive them. Because they are deceitful, dishonest, and dishonourable. They say one thing, and do another.
Trump is the biggest of all the useful idiots. He says one thing. Then another. Then another. And another. But as Musk Jr whispered to the Donald at that weird press call 'You're not the President'. He might have added 'Project 2025 is'.
Project 2025 probably imagined the application of raw and unwavering authoritarian power to methodically bulldoze its way to success. Team Trump's talent for surprise and confusion may not have been specified as additional requirements for success. But hey, fear, uncertainty and doubt are a great way to weaken the opposition. And the boys from the hollers are certainly good at all that stuff.
Vance said he was a Never-Trump guy. Called Trump an idiot. America's Hitler. Now he does everything Trump asks of him. He lays into Zelensky, lecturing all about respect for America. Zelensky is publicly attacked for 'not wearing a suit' in the Oval Office. But Musk turns up in his Saturday morning outfit, doesn't even take his hat off, and Vance says nothing.
Vance publicly derides and demeans Europe with a degree of disrespect that leaves the civilized world reeling. And he does so on the basis of no facts, no knowledge, no insight, and not a shred of apology.
Vance says one thing, and does another. Vance has no regard for truth, or facts.
Hegseth rants in perfect teenage style, about Europe being pathetic. About bailing us out again. Well, Pete, we fought the Second World War unaided by you, until someone else declared war on you, forcing you to join in to protect your own interests, not ours. You smothered Europe in military bases for the next seventy years to continue to protect your own interests, not ours. Your country spent ballooning amounts on defense to protect your own interests, not ours, but which of course made our own budgets look , as you would say, pathetic.
Hegseth struts like a statesman, acts like a kid, demands fealty from those he insults. He, too, doesn't care for truth, reality or facts.
Trump wrings his hands over the 'horrible killing' in Ukraine, while pumping weapons and money into Israel's now clearly unjustified attempts to obliterate all human life in Gaza. Trump says and does one thing here, and says and does another thing there, sometimes only moments later, in the same room.
All of them berate the UK and Europe for allegedly repressing free speech, which is simply the most obviously unhinged claim anyone could make. All the while deporting visitors for having 'anti-Trump' comments on their telephones, jailing British tourists who are actually trying to leave the US, and disappearing students for co-authoring papers calling for support for the end of a war on another continent, and deporting US citizens for no good reason at all except, they can.
These good ole boys don't think the US Department of Education should be in charge of funding schools in the US, but do believe the administration should control the funding and work of universities. On the one hand this, and on the other hand, that.
Hegseth supports the deportation of people with tattoos, claiming those tattoos identify them as gang members. Yet Hegseth has his own above-average ink, some of which — the Jerusalem cross — has a long history of association with all kinds of gangs, from the Crusaders to white supremacists, and is certainly an emblem that might still offend Jew and Muslim alike. He says one thing with his Brooks Brothers jacket and his Ralph Lauren shirt, and another when he takes them off. I'm not always what I appear to be.
This bunch of holier-than-thou free speech advocates seem unaware that the US list of banned books is long and growing. Longer, in fact, than that of Russia. Or China. There's one kind of free speech for me, and another for you.
Hegseth says that the American 'founders blatantly rejected (democracy) as being completely dangerous'. But he didn't say where they said that, and nobody can find where they did. His sidekick Vance, however, lambasts Europe for being anti-democratic and ignoring the will of its peoples. And, as ever, there's a complete absence of fact to back up such offensive — and screwball — claims.
Trump says he's going to reduce taxes, cut the cost of living. And applies tariffs (taxes on Americans), increases the cost of living, and tanks the global economy in one breezy afternoon in the rose garden. And now he says, swell, he never promised anyone a rose garden.
That Trump utterly fails to understand tariffs is not an opinion. It's a fact, pointed out by about 99.99% of every economist in the world, and large numbers of senior office-holding members of his own party. Indeed, you don't hear anyone defending Trump's understanding of tariffs at all. We're just going to do tariffs, anyway. Whatever. They'll make everyone unspeakably rich in the end. They'll just have to be unspeakably poor for a bit first.
Trump wallops the UK with a 10% tariff on everything — on top of the tariffs already imposed on us. Trumps says 'Prime Minister Starmer is very happy about that'. We haven't heard anything to that effect yet from our Prime Minister, so maybe Trump is talking about a different one.
Trump maintains America has been 'looted, pillaged, raped (he can talk) and plundered' by other nations. He seems unaware that, in the UK alone, Google, Meta, Amazon, X took some $63 billion out of the UK, but paid little more than $1 billion in tax. That's one tenth of the tax they'd pay in America. Who's doing the plundering? That $63 billion just about matches our UK defense budget. The one that Trump says isn't enough. Meanwhile, the UK trade deficit with the USA is pretty much nil. By Trump' s own measure (or at least, the one he had yesterday), there are no grounds for imposing the tariffs he's just imposed. He says one thing, and does something else.
What this all comes down to is trust. When someone says one thing, and does another, you know not to trust them. When someone says something is true, when it quite obviously isn't, you have to doubt everything they say. It's about double standards. About hypocrisy. About lying. About not caring about the difference between truth and falsehood. It's about people who are so shit-faced drunk on their own homebrewed hubris the only thing they really believe in is their own untouchability. Position and power grant total immunity. I can lurch from one inebriated wacko position to any other I like, whenever I like, careless of who I hurt on the way, or what anyone thinks of me, because I simply Don't Give A Fuck. Go Clampetts!
Many people voted for these animals. If you're one of them, you could be forgiven for falling for their lies. But tell me this. Can you tell me they can be trusted? Can you tell me they do what they say? Will you vote for them again?
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