‘Trump’
was always meant to rhyme with ‘chump’. I know this because I am a poet of the
old fashioned sort who enjoys rhymes. Equally, ‘Bankers’ instantly brings to mind the
word ‘w......’ to someone of my ilk.
The irony is that its doormat-head who doesn’t
get it.
Donald Trump’s selfish, spiteful tweets in
response to the news that aid workers recovering from Ebola were to be taken
home to the US for further treatment, have one benefit. They illustrate an
important point. From the everyday Jo on the street to the golf-course crazy
wombat with silly towers and expensive wives, fear and ignorance are bars to
both common sense and humanity.
Mr Trumped-up has possibly fried his grey matter
by spending too much time in la la land where the planet is just a smorgasbord
of profit opportunities and an expensive place to play.
So here is a reality check.
Ebola may have similarities to the plague (it is
incurable and has a high mortality rate) but this aint the mediaeval era. We
cannot pretend that there is real separation between countries. Those far-off
places that appear on exotic holiday websites have people living in them. Albeit
that those people have brown skin, they actually matter. They have families and
they love their children and they are not just a resource for the West, either
for making money or taking leisure.
Diseases like Ebola and all sorts of things that
we thought were safely ‘over there’ (TB, Malaria) as the world’s climate gets
knackered will, in the not too distant future, be ‘over here’.
Until the realisation slipped through that, in
its latest form and in our current circumstances, Ebola could leave Africa, the
news reports were sanguine. It was after all just a few more Africans dying
horribly. But as the numbers crept up and the spread seemed not to follow the
usual pattern the tone changed. WHAT IF IT GETS US?
In our brave new world, there are going to be
increasing phenomena that progress this way. We’ve already seen it with war.
Those pesky foreigners engaged in killing each other (in some conflicts that have their roots in Western interference) were news footnotes
just before the sport reports. Now it seems Western holidays may be in jeopardy
as it becomes increasingly dangerous for domestic flights to fly over war-torn
areas. Some favourite tourist destinations get bodies washed up on the beaches
from overloaded boats shipping desperate refugees from famine, poverty and
conflict.Get over it. It’s not just on the news. It is
happening and the world is too small for it to be contained by boarders or
treaties or the developing (struggling!) world’s respect for Westerners’
holiday arrangements.
In the 21st century, war and disease,
if we don’t treat them with respect and act to prevent them by dealing with
societal breakdown and chronic poverty, will spread. They will spread in the
countries where they began and they will spread to the countries that sit by and
they will spread while the rich and powerful stroll round their gold courses.
Bullets and viruses will no longer ‘do’
international barriers.
This week’s recommended blog from the archives
Blog 24 Cut Foreign Aid – what a spiffing idea