First Brexit, now Trump and Musk: ignorance is back with a vengeance | William Keegan
Share:
The aggression from the Tesla billionaire is new; but Britain has years of experience in the consequences of falling for misleading promises. ‘Never underestimate the power of ignorance.” I came across this thought while looking for something to watch late at night after the television news on the horrors in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and the Los Angeles fires.
![[William Keegan]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2017/10/09/William-Keegan,-L.png?width=180&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The quote comes from an old episode of my friend Paul Whitehouse’s The Fast Show. It applies, among many other things, to the background to the re-election of the criminal Donald Trump, and the continuing damage being wrought upon itself by a British electorate, 37% of whom voted, in frustration at other economic and social problems, for Brexit. With few exceptions they did not know what they were letting themselves in for; but they do now.
Now, I did not get where I am today by reading Trump’s mind or forecasting what he is going to do on day one after his inauguration on Monday. But to quote a recent motion picture it is hardly going to be A Quiet Place: Day One. All these threats about retaking the Panama Canal, making Canada into the 51st state and taking over Greenland, may, one hopes, turn out to be fantasies. But for a Nato country, the United States, to invade a Nato territory, Greenland, would be something else.
We know what Trump and his (current) accomplice Elon Musk think of checks and balances. One is reminded of Franklin D Roosevelt’s re-election speech in 1936 when he said: “We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace – business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism … They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that government by organised money is just as dangerous as government by organised mob.”.
