On the Brink of Trumperica

DONALD TRUMP IS so unpredictable that he is in danger of becoming predictable.

First, let us pay genuine homage to the disciple of Frank Sinatra who did it ‘My Way’. His way brought him back to the White House, which he will visit occasionally as he spends the next four years in the greater comfort and better weather of Florida.

For the first time in known history the most powerful empire on earth is in the grip of a man free from all obligations, not least of them being the human desire for continued power. Donald Trump knows that he is not going to be a candidate in 2028. He is liberated from caution. If his Republican Party wants office after him it can fend for itself.

Trump’s first term was a surprise prelude. The only people surprised by his victory last year were enemies blinded by hatred. From January 20 he will be writing the history of a new country called Trumperica.

His biggest asset is doubt which he uses as a strategic weapon. Will he bomb whatever is left of Gaza if hostages are not released within 48 hours or whatever is his ultimatum? No one can tell. That is his calling card. Will he conquer Greenland? It might not be a joke. He does not have to send marines into Nuuk, capital of 836,330 square miles which no one knew has been part of Denmark since 1814, with 56,583 subjects of King Frederik X, 89.51 per cent of them Inuit. He can set up bases and drill for minerals. What is the Danish monarch going to do? Send the air force? Yes, Trump will taunt Canada, probably every time he fancies a giggle. Yes, he will call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. No, he will not bomb Russia because Russia can bomb back. No, he will not start a major trade war with China because it would hurt America. Yes, he will sneer at Europe because most of the European establishment hates him. The road to Moscow does not go via Paris or Berlin in Trumperica.

Trump should check the route to Delhi because he just might need a friend. The rest of the world is fringe territory, worth an occasional glance in peacetime and a Trump thump if it becomes inimical to Trumperica.

THE NUMBER OF crypto-millionaires doubled in 2024, global trade grew to a record $33 trillion; the share price of Rolls-Royce rose from a low of £292 to £588; the arms industry celebrated Christmas, Eid and Diwali every week as global military expenditure touched $2.443 trillion, the highest in history. America, France, Russia, China, and Germany were the biggest arms exporters; take this statistic out of their economies and only America will remain healthy. The parallel mercenary industry has no statistics because it does not acknowledge its existence. For the last two years it has been in lift-off mode. Mercenaries belong to two tribes, those who believe in passports and those who do not much care. A third category fills in as labour when conscription takes able-bodied men to the warfront. All are in demand. There are no headlines.

Hypocrisy remained, by far, the biggest industry of 2024. When the Ukraine war began, Washington and its allies spread-eagled media with tough talk of how they were going to bring Russia to its knees with economic sanctions. Now that the war seems to be exploding to an end, we learn that Russian gas to Europe stopped only this month. It was going through Ukraine, no less. Sanctions? The trade in paperclips must have been sanctioned. Nor did the Russian elite have too many problems buying their fill of luxury goods from the West. Check out the exports of cars to countries on the borders of Russia.

In other news: traffic through the Suez Canal halved as Houthi missiles found their unexpected mark occasionally but markets absorbed higher costs of longer sea routes without a murmur. In large democracies, governments survived in India and South Africa where the despair of losers was matched by the perplexity of victors. The ruling crowd crumbled in America, Britain, Brazil, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. In sport, worshippers of Indian cricket were again betrayed by their gods.

GOA HAS JUST welcomed a happy new decade with the St Francis Xavier Exposition between December and January. A miracle rests in this idyllic corner on the edge of the sea. Every 10 years the Catholic church of Panaji puts the incorruptible body of St Francis Xavier, the 16th-century co-founder of the Jesuit movement and missionary to Goa, China and Japan, on display for believers and the reverential. We joined the early morning queue and bowed our heads as we passed the casket containing the recognisable body which retains skin and shape after four-and-a-half centuries. Sceptics do not join the queue for they have no explanation. Science might eventually come up with an answer, but God is easier to recognise. Only atheists believe in death. The rest of us wander between doubt, silence and faith.

A map of modern India had sprung up adjacent to the exposition, in a brilliant market. The shops were cities of contemporary life. Sawal’s Goa Shopping Centre. Udupi Ratna Sagar Pure Veg Restaurant beside Ratna Sagar Family Restaurant & Bar. Goan Wine House. Baskin-Robbins. Tattoo Studio. Mime artiste in gold costume. Step Inn Restaurant. Frenchdairy Ice Creams. Mumbai Special Gobi Manchuria, advertised by a Shah Rukh Khan lookalike. Coca-Cola. Belgaum Fast Food. Mumbai Cosmetic. Untitled shack with Christian icons. Sankalp Chana. A banner of St John Baptist Restaurant strung between cloth and clothes shops. Flowers from Old Goa: Sale Rs 60 & Rs 70 Fixed Price. Apollo’s Magic World: Learn Magic Buy Magic. Contact 9822135183. Condiments Rajasthan Pickles. Bearded seller of toys and trinkets in unmarked shop, with recitation of the holy book in a soft waft. Lime Soda & Sweet Corn: Delhi Papad, Cauli Flowers Dry Gobi, Potato Twister, Sweet Corn in a cup 3 flavors Fresh & Healthy. Lingerie. Mother Mary Halwa Store. Velankannya Hot Banana. Kerala Calicut Halwa in 12 varieties including SP Masala Halwa. An endless vista.

TWO THOUGHTS for 2025: Asia is a Greek word meaning resurrection. Will Asia live up to its meaning in 2025? If order is chaos rearranged, is chaos normalcy and order exceptional?

OUR YEARS BEGIN as addition and end as subtraction. Yet another close friend of decades passed away in the winter of 2024. The only recourse left was verse. Legend, which must never be dismissed as untruth, has it that the only copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam was preserved in the library of the Old Man of the Mountains, the intellectual-ideologue-reductionist Hasan Sabbah (1037-1124). Thank you, then, for saving these haunting lines:

Think, in this battered caravanserai
Whose doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his pomp
Abode his hour or two, and went his way.

…

Ah, my beloved, fill the cup that clears
Today of past regrets and future fears:
Tomorrow—why, tomorrow I may be
Myself with yesterday’s seven thousand years.

…

Ah make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the dust descend;
Dust into dust, and under dust to lie,
Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and sans end.

AmericaCryptocurrencyDonald TrumpgeopliticsOmar KhayyamSt Francis Xavier