Columns

From the moment I heard that one of the three stooges who has turned a part of the White House into a dance hall has been awarded a special Venezuelan Peace Prize, Machiavelli’s words came to mind.

“It is not titles that honour men but men that honour titles.” So when Venezuela’s opposition leader was said to have honoured Donald Trump with a quickly turned-out Nobel Peace Prize, it seemed appropriate enough. But for one missing link.

Had the opposition leader pointed out on which side of the abductors she stood, it would have been clearer. If on the side of Trump, perhaps she is expecting a posting that would perch her way up in the ranks of some US oil giants, counting the barrels as they make their way to the White House.

If not, and she is trying to ridicule the man who wants the whole for himself, she better take a quick journey to some distant land where there is no oil or little bits of mineral that the world’s leader is after.

If Mr Trump gets even a whiff of the opposition leader, whatever her name is, he will be in that kind of mood where he is ready to take control of a mental asylum, for he needs as much space as a cricket field to house his incoming immigrants from many corners of the world.

Don’t get me wrong, for he is a generous man, and he is ready to treat his political associates well, even preparing dance floors at the White House for them so that this Trump can play an ace and get them to teach him the tango, the samba, the cha-cha, and whatever he has gathered in his recent avatar when he was more tied up trying to undo some account books when some sharp-eyed accountants were having a look-see at some of the Trumpeter’s work.

Now that we have got over the bits and ends, perhaps the world might want to know more about who thinks he can rule the world, and he has already demarcated little bits of that country, more acres of the other, some barrels from other parts of the Western Hemisphere, and a few parts of Australia if they do not mind, and he may frighten the Japanese that he has nice little atom bombs far more potent than what Trump’s political ancestors dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and decided to run the place till the Americans stopped eating sushi and tempura and returned to their pathetically colourless hot dogs.

Let’s take a look at the great politician who is preparing to rock the world with his greed for power and assets—never mind whose it is, it is unquenchable. One could gather how wise and diplomatically clever and assertive Donald Trump is if one had time to study Trump’s first term and the second that he is serving now.

Some might wonder what Trump intends to do with all the toys he is determined to collect from the millions of hectares and that he is planning to dig underground and on the seabed.

He must be thinking that the rest of the world is as daft as he is by selling the story that his whole intention is to eliminate the narco trade the Venezuela is heavily involved in and supplying the American people.

What kind of bullish excrement is he trying to hoodwink? There might be that set of loud-mouthed American thuggish native bunches of the MAGA group that Trump endured and encouraged to represent great American culture.

And what is this MAGA but an abbreviation for Trump’s great cultural and sociopolitical enterprise that he sees as his contribution to America and the world—that is if he has been able to grab a chunk of Marsian soil to show he ruled Mars.

The trouble with this property salesman, if nothing else, is that he suffers from delusions of adequacy. He labours under the misapprehension that he knows the world’s leaders, and his American culture is sufficient to cow down other big powers too by threatening and bullying them into submission.

So now he has warned the people of Cuba that stood against the barrage of American fire power because the presence of Russian power as Moscow said what it would if Cuba is attacked.

Over the recent years, he might call it political-diplomatic success. He might consider himself an intellectual Godzilla, but he is little more than a big-talking thug who escaped conviction from some 34 charges because he was voted president in 2024, and so he earned the presidential immunity.

If he has been convicted of various charges and escaped punishment only because people hailing him as the saviour of a dying America voted for him. He was saved by his great MAGA supporters who helped Trump into office. Is that the great American civilisation that Trump and his cohorts expect to bring to the American surface and around?

Surely the President of the Ukraine and people who saw some shots on TV who was invited to the White House by Trump being manhandled by the same Trump and bundled out of the White House.

If Trump expects to be a world leader, he might do something about his reckless disregard for facts, as the media have pointed out on many occasions in the print and electronic media.

Perhaps the great Trump, also known in some places as Bump and Grump, might do better if he gets a dry clean and gets rid of his philistine hostility that begins when anger cuts through his defence.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor, Diplomatic Editor and Political Columnist of the Hong Kong Standard before moving to London, where he worked for Gemini News Service. Later he was Deputy Chief of Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London before returning to journalism.)