Ah yes, that old remark. I once said Americans would do the right thing after exhausting all alternatives… I fear these days, the alternatives have become rather more inventive—and the exhaustion, quite permanent.

The Kremlin will send ten thousand men into the fire for a single mile of ground, and when half are slain, they call it a good day’s work.

Their rulers think nothing of squandering men as though they were musket balls.

With China he wagered on tariffs, thinking the mandarins would cry uncle when the golden spigot was pinched.

Instead, they played the long game, as they always do, suffering the sting today for the profit tomorrow.

Trump mistook patience for weakness, and in that he was wrong

Trump presents us Vance as his successor; it is rather like a circus master promising that the understudy clown will now tame the lions.

The young man may well one day learn statecraft, but it is doubtful the Republic can afford to serve as his schoolroom.

So Trump has anointed a successor —this Vance fellow. Hah!
One might as well name the cabin boy Captain because he looks tidy in uniform. The ship of state requires a helmsman, not a memoirist still learning his sea legs.

With China he wagered on tariffs, thinking the mandarins would cry uncle when the golden spigot was pinched. Instead, they played the long game, as they always do, suffering the sting today for the profit tomorrow. Trump mistook patience for weakness, and in that he was wrong.

Trump fancies himself the merchant prince of diplomacy—a bargain here, a boast there, as though the chancelleries of Delhi and Peking were but stalls in some gaudy bazaar.

Imagine, a man so desperate for laurels that he shakes his fist at Oslo! I daresay even Napoleon never thought to bully the Scandinavians into flattery. Prizes are not won by tantrums, and if Mr. Trump thinks otherwise, then he mistakes the Nobel Committee for one of his casinos.”

I find it difficult to dispute your point.

One is at a loss to explain America’s posture with regard to these events

I can only account for it as a structural breakdown in the country’s systems of education and public information.

I’ve been an observer of US politics for many years. The actual conduct of government by American leaders today is far afield from the nation’s founding principles. This does not surprise me.

What does is the public support for their policies by those professing belief in those lost principles .

Madame, without question I think we may state that at least within the United States that arc is now inverting and bending away from justice and toward what …?

Each day, my lowest expectations don’t descend to level of their latest cruel folly.

Modern comment ignores the paradox of the Russian inclination to cross the borders of its neighbors

Russia- the nation with largest land mass, 17 million sq Km, seeks expansion, for what?

Perhaps to distract their populace from the failure of their system & corruption and inefficiency

…..to mankind’s intellectual freedom and general well being.

There may well be many advantages to this new advanced technology if it is under the direction wise and benevolent men.

For now those benefits escape my understanding.

3/3

The papers would often be in the service of various interests, but I could counter with public speaking and use occasional access to the wireless to access opinion

I fear this “cloud” obscures the motives and identities of powerful interests whose motives must certainly be in opposition …..

2/3

One obvious quality shared by Messrs. Trump and Putin is their reliance upon the tools of distraction and false grievance.