“My only concern is Trump’s dealing with China, but even there I think his tariff threats are part of his so-called Art of the Deal. Will he sacrifice American lives to prevent a Chinese takeover of Taiwan? Really?” writes ROBERT MACKLIN.
All kids think they’re the good guys. I was an only child with my father off at the war then on the road selling King Tea up the Queensland coast, and in our Brisbane suburban street there were no other kids my age.
So when cousin Elwyn came to visit one New Year holiday at last I had a bad guy to play with.
The game we all played then was cowboys and indians. I had a little collection of cap guns. We loaded a roll of caps into the innards of the revolvers and when you pulled the trigger the hammer (sometimes) hit the cap, making a very satisfying “Bang!” while positioning the next cap for the hammer.
I was very excited.
Elwyn was seven or eight like me but was the baby of her family and had never played with her much older brothers. So I explained the rules to her. We both had to run away and hide, then we had to search for each other and shoot our revolvers and when you were hit you had to die for a while as the enemy ran off and hid. Then you went looking for him for revenge.
Elwyn was a hopeless bad guy. She couldn’t manage the cap gun very well and when I shot her she died and just about went to sleep on the soft green couch grass near the tank stand. I had to leave my beaut hideout behind the copper washing tub under the house to bring her back to life.
Then she said indians had bows and arrows and I knew that, but mum said they were too dangerous, and after that when I changed my hideout to the fork of the big mango tree, she couldn’t find me and started crying.
Absolutely hopeless. Thereafter she mostly helped mum in the kitchen where she learnt how to make pikelets and mum’s famous “lemon delish” pudding. I spent more time in the mango tree and learned to ride dad’s bicycle through the bars.
All these years later, not a lot has changed. As Australians, we still think we’re the good guys who celebrate our victories against the Germans in two world wars and the Japanese in the second one.
Since then, we’ve lost all the other wars we fought alongside our big powerful cousin, the United States of America – Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the border war between Russia and Ukraine seems hopeless.
In fact, when I think about the cowboys and indians, I realise I was no good guy then. As a cowboy, I was a bully and a thief just as I and my compatriots were bullies and thieves in their treatment of the Aboriginal people.
And now that our big, powerful cousin has elected Donald J Trump as their presidential Wizard of Oz, will we ever be on the side of the good guys again?
The answer is not necessarily “no”. Truth is, we really have no idea how he’s going to conduct his presidency. I don’t much care if he deports a million or so Central Americans to their home countries or puts his hoods in charge of the Justice Department. And I really don’t care if he pulls out of NATO – the Europeans should be perfectly capable of looking after their own security.
Happily, we’ve signalled a “pass” on the seemingly endless religious war in the Middle East, so he can play around with that as much as he likes. He has conned his evangelical base into thinking he’s a believer, but he will never surrender his authority to their demands for a theocracy.
My only concern is his dealing with China, but even there I think his tariff threats are part of his so-called Art of the Deal. Will he sacrifice American lives to prevent a Chinese takeover of Taiwan? Really?
Looking back from the mango tree heights of age and experience, I just can’t see it. Meantime, maybe we should take a leaf from Elwyn’s book and take a nap on the soft green couch by the metaphorical tank stand.
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