Over the past four years it has become common to respond to tales of Donald Trump’s corruption, incompetence, mercurial nature and autocracy by asking the question: why is his errant behaviour tolerated in the US?
Unfortunately, reasons for posing this question have accelerated during his administration.
The US looks today like a great power in decline. The effort of Trump and his acolytes to overturn the results of a democratic election is but one facet of America’s regression. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed and dismissed.
President Trump incited a mob of his supporters using intemperate language to besiege the Capitol building, that citadel of US liberty, in a final, abortive effort to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. Trump told them to fight to reverse what he claimed, without evidence, was a stolen election. He relied almost exclusively on baseless conspiracies about election fraud to make his case.
President-elect Biden made a televised appeal to Trump to call for a halt to this anti-democratic, seditious action. Some even called it an attempted coup.
This ignominious incident is resonant of a third world dictatorship. The US is also facing an alarming collapse in state capacity. The most important recent example involves vaccine distribution. The federal government was effective in subsidising pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines in record time for use against coronavirus. But it has subsequently dropped the ball in relation to vaccine roll-out. The result is that, so far, just 4.3 million (1.3 per cent) of the country is vaccinated – more than 15 million short of the original target of 20 million by December 31 2020.
There has also been a shocking breakdown in public order with murders and violent crime rocketing. This could be a function of people reacting in socially destructive ways in response to pandemic-related lockdowns and resulting economic disruption. Or it could be driven by protests against law enforcement due to the endemic racism of the police. Or it could be due to America’s permissive gun culture.
However, irrespective of the reason, this failure to maintain elementary law and order is another disturbing example of a collapse in state capacity.
We are left with a vision of a government constrained at multiple levels.
Getting rid of an irrational, despotic president should be a start in reversing this decline, but the problem is obviously bigger than one man.
GEORGE WORKMAN
Mornington, Co Meath
White elephant of Stormont is falling apart
It now appears Trevor Ringland has a desire to have some editorial rights as to what The Irish News prints (December 21). Was Tommy McKearney’s horror story about the hunger strike something Trevor would prefer was ignored?
Trevor unquestionably informs the world of Tommy McKearney’s guilt while omitting to mention Tommy was found guilty after he was tortured and abused for a whole week while in RUC custody. Many republicans who served long sentences were found guilty by the same system in this great wee country where the draconian laws administered here are unknown in any other democracy.
The McKearney family paid a heavy price for their opposition to the devastating scourge of the colonial invader in Ireland, so it is unlikely Tommy McKearney would need any lectures from Mr Ringland.
Trevor Ringland may be too young to remember the Civil Rights movement. All they requested was equal rights and a place to live in their own country, instead they were met with the brutality of the RUC at Burntollet, that was their understanding of a shared home place, hence the consequences ever since, Pat Finucane and many others murdered in the sanctity of their own home, some in their own bed by the collusion of the RUC and UDR with loyalist paramilitaries, were not afforded a shared home place that has left many grieving families who are unlikely to forget it all.
Does it ever occur to Trevor Ringland that it might be more productive to address his own people in the unionist/loyalist community about penance and reconciliation and how to heal the wounds caused by their actions over the years.
The unnecessary hatreds he speaks of are not the manufacture of the natives who were driven from their homes and their land to facilitate the planters who refused to integrate with the locals, instead they and their descendants harboured a desire to be a special race where their entitlement to everything was of right and that eventually got us a partitionist Stormont, a Protestant parliament.
So it is ironic that in this year 2021 that the white elephant of Stormont that could never be made to work is falling apart and all its governance cracking at the seams held together only with Sinn Féin glue.
LAURENCE O’NEILL
Martinstown, Co Antrim
Donal Trump will not be welcome in Ireland
Life is good in Belfast.
We love our kids and now live in peace with our unionist, nationalist, loyalist and republican neighbours. Our politicians aren’t perfect, but most of them are doing their best.
America and Ireland are not the only nations to be glad to see the back of The Donald and his enablers. Now there is hope. Don’t despair, we are all in a better place than we have been this past four years, our bad dream is over but Mr Trump’s bad dream is just about to begin.
Jennifer Senior couldn’t have put it better when she suggested in The New York Times that Trump meets the criteria of a malignant narcissist and he has a defect in moral conscience that is emblematic of psychopaths.
So, if this letter finds you Mr Trump, I have a message for you – Ireland is my Island and I love it dearly, and you sir, and your family are not welcome on it. Ever.
MARTY McCAFFERTY
Belfast BT14
Rule Britannia
According to Alex Kane (December 14) “What unionists have in common is a belief the United Kingdom is preferable to a united Ireland.”
To put it bluntly, they don’t want Irish rule in any shape or form. Meanwhile they force British rule on the Irish ‘minority’. The British don’t mess about. Britain asserts sovereignty over Northern Ireland ‘in its entirety’. In other words Britain has usurped the role of Irish government for Irish people. Unionists fail to understand or just don’t care. As they celebrate NI’s centenary they expect the Irish ‘minority’ to celebrate British rule. Rule Britannia.
MALACHY SCOTT
Belfast BT15
