Only in America

25 July 2024

Only in America. It’s easy, isn’t it – much too easy – to invoke the standard response that only in the so-called Land of the Free could these things transpire. A vigorous, vulgar, mendacious man, loud mouthed and hyperbolic who has refused to believe that he lost the last election despite his own vice president who declared to be valid beyond any shadow of doubt, is shot at (and escapes only by a whisker) so that this man who turned a blind eye to the treasonable march on the Capitol on January 6th 2021, is now the improbable victim of an assassination attempt. And who is his would-be assassin? A 20-year-old boy who seems to have far more in common with the Columbine-style high school shooters than he does with anyone remotely political. Meanwhile, the incumbent president, the man who beat the braggart, has not done badly at his impossible job with secure backing of the United Nations with a concerned and concerted attitude to climate change and staunch backing of AUKUS, as well as some attempt at compassion on the border despite the flood of immigrants. He has been unswerving in his support for Ukraine and he has made it clear that he wants a ceasefire in Gaza, though he refuses to cut Israel adrift (the kids don’t like this, but politically worldly Muslims, including those who leave the Australian Labor Party, accept the sovereignty of Israel and do not countenance suggestions of its illegitimacy). He didn’t handle the withdrawal from Afghanistan well, but it was an inevitable decision. And yet there have been endless cries for him not to contest the next election because he performed meanderingly, sometimes incoherently, in the first debate with the bad loser one-time president. And the fact that mikes were turned off while lies were being shouted by his loudmouth antagonist work to his disadvantage. No one seems to remember the reports first heard months ago that the other side were editing footage of him to emphasise his elderliness, his stammering, his slips. Ever since the debate, the pressure has mounted intolerably. He has called the Ukrainian leader by the name of the Russian tyrant. He has slipped verbally all over the place and he has also been told by famous actors and Democrat supporters that he is not in a fit state to contest the next election, that he shows every sign of

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