Kaj Halberg - writer & photographer

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Power-hungry politicians

 

 

I dislike power-hungry and pompous politicians, who have a huge ego, spending most of their time promoting themselves. Unfortunately, the world is full of them, and many powerful nations are governed by such types. All right, a number of these leaders have come into power via military coups, but some have been elected by democratic means, which is highly alarming, because it reflects the ignorance and/or low mental level of the population.

When such leaders are also psychopaths, suffering from megalomania, hell is loose. Naturally, they are not able to manipulate an entire population on their own, so they surround themselves with a group of other psychopaths, each of which is in control of a ministry or an office. One of these is the secretary of war (or defence, as they usually call themselves), who is in control of a huge group of helpers, called soldiers. When the president, emperor, king, chairman, great leader, or whatever he calls himself, wishes to expand his lebensraum, he will stir up the crowds to wage war at other countries. The World History is filled with such monsters: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Ivan the Terrible, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Tse-dung, to name but a few, who all caused the death of millions of people. (By the way, why is he called Alexander the Great? The man was mad!)

War is a situation, in which all civilization is replaced by anarchy, in which soldiers are ordered to kill people, who have never done any misdeed to them, and in which indiscriminate shootings of civilians, mass rape, burning down cities, and other monstrosities, take place on a huge scale. The tragedy of it is that also peaceful nations are forced to spend huge means to establish a defence towards these aggressors.

The latest addition to pompous politicians is a gentleman with yellow hair and a red tie, who already during his election campaign declared that it was his intention to erect a 2000-mile-long wall along the border to Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants – immigrants, on which the United States is dependant to carry out the jobs that no American wants. Supposedly, this wall is going to stretch from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific, along gorgeous rivers, and right across national parks and other protected areas. Are the feet of this individual connected to the ground? – Unfortunately, these facts did not deter people from voting for him, so now the United States has yet another president, who worships the money god, and doesn’t give a damn about nature conservation. Maybe he should take a day off, and, instead of playing golf, it would be appropriate for him to read the poem Mending Wall, by Robert Frost, in which some of the lines read:

 

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know,
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.

 

After a few months as president, it is obvious that the primary goal of Mr. Trump is to consider the interests of his personal friends, so that they can make more money. They are already stinking rich, so what on Earth do they want more money for?

 

(March 10, 2017)