5th March 2017

In the Foreword to Vichyssoise I note that "People in democracies all over the world, when casting their vote for leader, should choose the person who is the most educated of the selection." Of course in that book I was referring to the populist French choice of Philippe Petain in WW2 - a man far too-weak and politically-inexperienced. The problem is that no-one at the time of voting could possibly have known what their newly-elected leader would be forced to face. This week a French historian, ironically a specialist in WW2, was detained for 10 hours by armed US customs officials whilst on his way to an academic conference in Texas. Other innocent new arrivals have reported similarly that if you get called out of the arrivals line, you are screamed at and treated as a potential terrorist. What then can the world do about Donald Trump? He's certainly not weak as Petain was and may actually deliver some populist constitutional changes, but his political inexperience and gung-ho bravura, combined with a team bristling with 'mad dog' Generals, bodes just as much ill for the world as did the mild Petain when collaborating with Hitler. I wonder if on his Oval Office wall Trump's got a sign, emulating Petain, saying 'L'histoire me jugera'!

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