Recent events had me considering the planetary impact of presidents Trump and Putin, prime ministers Orban and Netanyahu — with poetry lines in my head from 1955 to 1956 Grade 5 memorizing. “In Flanders fields the poppies blow…” “I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree…” “Behind him lay the gray Azores, behind the Gates of Hercules.” The latter by Joaquin Miller is apt these dragging-out war weeks of Trump’s and Netanyahu’s.
The poem’s next lines are ominous: “Before him not the ghost of shores / Before him only shoreless seas.” Frightening. Columbus’s sea voyage will go on and on. Frightened crew. Trump often says after his orders, “Let’s see what happens.” Consequences unexplored. Columbus captained his ship. Trump presides over our country. We easily have misgivings as he charges forth. Trump could have advisors capable of filling in his knowledge gaps, but, as Chief of Staff Susie Wiles recently said, he’s surrounded himself with those who will tell him just what he wants to hear. And keep their jobs. She’s also keeping her job.
“Before him not the ghost of shores / Before him only shoreless seas.” Trump is stuck for no-allies. NATO won’t help out with the Strait of Hormuz’s jammed-up, waiting shippers, after he, without foresight, belittled them, insulted them. He angrily reacted at war’s start, “We don’t need you.” Negative words live. History’s famed who survived possibly deadly situations because help came, probably learned diplomatic behavior on their fifth grade playground (or equivalent). Trump’s mistakes make bad consequences for planetary life and our world’s interlocking economies!
Despite his claim, “I don’t need laws. I have my morals and my brain,” evidence says otherwise.
Meanwhile death is dealt to innocent humans in the Middle East by our felon Trump and Israel’s Netanyahu who will be in court for “bribery, fraud, breach of trust.” War on Gaza delayed his trial. Now war extended to Iran and most of the Middle East gets Netanyahu yet more emergency-excuse court delay. Donald J. Trump, admiring “strong men” Bibi Netanyahu and Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin, answered Netanyahu’s call against Hamas (as did President Biden) and used our tax dollars in killing thousands of innocent Gazans and mangling their modern city infrastructure.
Now other brown-skinned Middle Easterners have become victims, despite that “cradle of civilization” providing humankind’s major achievements. Our tax dollars go to murder. Military personnel are endangered. We see consequent budget cuts to medical research and care, education unfettered by narrow limits, big funding after weather disasters, fighting man-made climate change, addressing homelessness, our own U.S. infrastructure needs, the arts, public radio and public TV, science. Cuts even from our well-loved and visited National Parks! The recent NASA success doesn’t keep Trump supportive. His budget blueprint cuts NASA’s funding by 23%. Did he seethe over the DEI of that crew: a woman and a Black man included?
Heather Cox Richardson, in her April 11 “Letters from an American,” reported Rep. Jamie Raskin’s letter to the president’s personal physician, Captain Sean P. Barbarella. From Raskin: “In recent days, the country has watched President Trump’s public statements and outbursts turn increasingly incoherent, volatile, profane, deranged, and threatening.” Raskin wants “a comprehensive cognitive assessment of President Donald Trump, provide those results to Congress, and make yourself [Barbarella] available to brief Congress on your findings.” Medications should be made public, and any potential side effects. Update: in the final week of April, is Trump more reined in? No. Now headlines are about the correspondents’ dinner scene’s assassination attempt.
The Gates of Hercules are now symbolic of “strength, endurance, and exploration.” Our four astronauts’ successful moon-circling mission, fast-faded from the headlines, fits that goal. The Hilton Hotel ballroom attack with Trump and his cabinet members endangered, and his dismal polling numbers prompt attention to the Gates of Hercules’ historic warning “to go no further.” Trump tongue-lashed the Pope and aggrieved religions’ faithful. Sixteen-years-tyrant Viktor Orban lost reelection as Hungary’s Prime Minister. Strong men beware?
Seventy years after Mrs. Gleason steered 11-year-olds’ attention to world history via poems, any hope for sea changes? In 1956, Hungary had an unsuccessful uprising against Soviet rule. E. E. Cummings wrote his poem, “Thanksgiving 1956” on that. In 2026, Hungary’s modern tyrant is voted out of office and with a concession speech. Not small, that defeat for Europe’s populist movement. The concession speech hopefully startled Trump.
Lynn Rudmin Chong lives in Sanbornton.
