Linked here for posterity, because it is so damned good, political reporter Chris Uhlmann’s scathing analysis of President Trump’s performance at the G20 talks in Hamburg this past week. Unusually, for anything said by an Australian, news services in the US picked it up and interviewed Uhlmann; one by-line suggesting that he’d been called on to defend his comments, but I’ve yet seen any evidence of that, certainly not by MSNBC. I’m surprised nobody has seriously taken him to task, given how strident the right-wing media are over there, but there’s still time!

Nice graphic, but bear in mind the slow slide downhill towards the right since the report was commissioned in 2014, plus the precipitous plunge into the murky chasm since the election! Interestingly, the graphic suggested that in 2014 the ‘average’ respondent was ever-so slightly towards the political left. I wonder where that person went? I suspect I know: s/he got eaten. The sleeping dog of American politics, the disenchanted conservative non-voter, connected with the lowest-common-denominator language employed by the Trump campaign, woke up angry, and lumbered down to the voting booth for the first time in twenty years.

Anyhoo, thought I’d throw this on, mostly because American’s seem so surprised whenever they hear an articulate opinion from outside their own borders. How demoralising it must to be to see that democratically-elected buffoon standing isolated among genuine world leaders, steadfast in his refusal to acknowledge that he has two ears but only one mouth, for a reason.

By the way, why does Apple autocorrect change Uhlmann to Ullmann every time! Aren’t these machines supposed to learn? Who is Ullmann, anyway? You’d think after I’ve un-‘corrected’ the name six or seven times, the little rodent in the treadmill at the heart of my MacBook would go, ‘Shit! Really? Okay, okay!” and leave it alone, but no.

At this rate, computers will never rule the Earth.

Liv Ullmann? Never heard of her.

 

 

Leave a Reply