Trump's diversionary tactics & pretensions to greatness

[reedak]

1(a) Whenever Donald Trump faces difficulties or a crisis (now probably the midterm elections and the Khashoggi murder), he would “play that game” of diversionary tactics to distract attention from the real problems.

Hence it is not surprising that, out of the blue, he announced his intention to withdraw from a landmark arms control treaty with Russia that has kept mid-range nuclear-tipped missiles off the European continent for three decades.

The reason, Trump said, was that Russia had violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty “for many years” by building, producing, and fielding prohibited cruise missiles despite repeated warnings from Washington.

1(b) Another possible reason, like his obsession to build "a great, great wall" along the US-Mexico border, is his pretensions to greatness. However, whatever legacy he leaves behind will end up like many self-aggrandizing monuments or statues -- "nothing remains, only the 'lone and level sands,' which stretch out around it", as in the following famous poem.

1(c) “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 - 1822

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias

http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/shelley/section2/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias

http://time.com/5431467/donald-trump-in ... ns-russia/