Her er oversettelsen;
Gave face to evil and low forehead
Donald Trump has given face to the unsympathetic and low-brow. He has done a lot of damage, but the most harmful thing he did was probably to show the world that an asshole in a class of his own could only be himself.
What is the truest moment of Donald Trump's presidency? We ask the question because even for notorious liars - who lie so much that they apparently no longer know the difference between truth and falsehood - there is a moment of truth. Or two. Perhaps it was one last week when he pardoned four mercenaries for a massacre in 2007, when the four unprovoked opened fire on civilians in central Baghdad, killing 14 people. He who first opened fire was given life, the other three 30 years. Now they are free men.
Trump also granted amnesty to a number of his loyal criminal supporters. After all, it can be understood in Trump's world, which revolves around the self-indulgent selfishness without equal. But why have such a beating heart for four war criminals who only mow down random civilians? Because the people killed were only foreigners, Arabs, and apparently Muslims from "shit hole countries", ie lives without value, in Trump's world? Or because the killers were, after all, American mercenaries - America First? In any case, the amnesty undermines in a way that can best be summed up as evil, respect for international law, and helps to make war crimes less serious. Was that when we saw the real Trump?
Or was Trump's truest moment when he insisted that there were many more present during his inauguration in 2017 than during Barack Obama's inauguration eight years earlier? That was when a close associate explained Trump's obvious lie that it was about "alternative facts." Was this qualified lie a moment of truth about Trump? Maybe the very truth? The starting point for this article is to describe what was most devastating to the world during Trump's presidency. We have, of course, the climate denier, the corona denier, and the fact denier. We have the elephant as a diplomat, who has trampled on most agreements, and across all borders for folk customs. We have the president who cultivated personal insults as a political tool on his quest for destruction. But after pondering the challenge for a while, the most devastating thing for the world in Trump's time was simply that Trump was Trump. And that he was allowed to be.
In the choice between generosity and understanding on the one hand, and the petty and vicious on the other, he was consistent, he chose evil, bullying and hatred. In the choice between rational and irrational politics, he was equally consistent, he chose the irrational. And in the choice between working towards long-term goals that can give results, and short-term stunts that could give attention, he chose attention - the latter he is not alone in. Still, quite accomplished, he chose both the most immoral and the worst solutions. In his innumerable inconsistencies, he was actually quite consistent. Is this a moment of truth for Trump? Do we have him now? Like the consistently inconsistent? In two and a half weeks, Donald Trump will no longer be President of the United States. A more conventional analysis of Trump and the world than the one you have read so far will tell us that he far managed to destroy the relationship with his traditional European allies. Norway is one of the countries in Europe where a majority believes Trump poses a greater danger to world peace than Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is a startling recognition that one's closest allied is more dangerous than the country that was the enemy during the Cold War.
In Asia, the reality has become just as absurd. Trump treated allies such as Japan and South Korea with indifference and almost contempt. While he was "in love" with the bloodiest dictator of our time, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Trump should shine, and perform diplomatic miracles - he thought. He challenged gravity and thought he would make Kim give up his only security guarantee, the nuclear weapons. Foolishness and stupidity, we can say - at least in retrospect. Although some of us also said it when it was on. In any case, the policy was once again based on the desire for maximum attention, rather than on sober analysis. The poser offered himself again.
But perhaps the truest analysis is this: that this revolutionary destroyer could cultivate all his unsympathetic features from the position of the world's most powerful man, because he was the wrong man at the wrong time. And even though Trump was also a child of his time, people like him - at least in democracies - are, after all, an abnormality in the course of history.
Morten Strand
Publisert lørdag 02. januar 2021 - 20:42
Sist oppdatert lørdag 02. januar 2021 - 20:42
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