It's been awhile, but what's the hurry?--Brueghel's Nederlandisch Proverbs is more than 450 years old and not going anywhere soon because all that zany wisdom still has currency, even today--even this morning.
Our hair-on-fire President has a penchant for robbing the rest of us of our breath. Like none other, he keeps us entertained, doesn't he? But what if the show goes foul? That Brueghel's been dead for four centuries, that he had no clue about Trump doesn't mean the proverbs in this circus-sized canvas of folk wisdom don't still apply.
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| Top, far left corner |
Take this poor guy, Trump's take on Obama, especially with regards to Iran, is Lets door de vingers zien (he was looking through his fingers); he seemed to prefer "to look the other way." It's said of the dead man, General Soleimani, that the U.S. could have picked him off anywhere, anytime in the last decade because the he wasn't really hiding. The general was strutting about seeking whom he might devour. Most commentators claim Soleimani's grizzly death should prompt no tears; he was an evil, evil man. But Obama could have taken him out anytime he wanted to. But didn't, Trump will likely say, because Obama would rather look through his fingers.
Which meant, our fearless leader will likely say that America used to be indecisive and therefore pilloried by the rest of the world, especially by our enemies (Iran especially, according to POTUS). That stinking, rotten treaty that Obama bobbie-pinned together, the one 45 shredded the moment he got into office, the multi-national agreement Obama had fashioned out of most of the world powers, meant we were right there in the predicament featured in this sad Brueghel louse.
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| In the opening beneath the globe--far left side |
Look at the anguish. Trump will tell us he won't let us live that way. No way. Let's just take Soleimani out and then, well, we'll see what happens.
The problem for the rest of us is we haven't a clue what that might be. Seems this evil general is looked upon as a hero--no, a god in the Middle East. Taking him out throws gas on what's already pretty much constantly burning. We blew up a man all kinds of terrorists look upon as a Muslim Crazy Horse, a mystic tough guy who never took a knee for any yankee.
Most commentators, like most experts on the Middle East, make the same claim: wherever Soleimani was a hero, his followers, fanatics all, will spit revenge, all of which leaves the rest of us, this morning, like this fellow, Tussen hemel an aarde hangen, strung up, hanging and helpless someplace between heaven and earth--or worse. I don't know what to feel--do you? And the bottom of that bucket is quickly falling away.
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| center, far right |
Mostly, all we can do is hope--and pray--that the man with the orange hair got this one right, that taking a terrorist honcho out relieves us of pain and won't lead to more 9/11s. Right now, 350 million people have no choice but to hope that POTUS has done this right and not wrong, not, as Brueghel would show by way of a hooded woman at lower left.
She doesn't look at all like Donald, but that doesn't mean she's not related. Whoever she is, she clearly carries our fears this a.m.: she's like us because naar het kippenei grijpen en hat ganzeini laten lopen. She's kept a hen's egg and allowed the goose egg to walk off. She's made one heckuva lousy decision.
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| center, far right |
I've featured this one before, but I'm going to use it again because it has a sad and fetid currency this morning, or so it seems to me--a woman holding up a basket to a horse's backside: Paardenkeutels zijn geen vijgen, which is to say, the goods that come from the back end of a horse should not be mistaken for figs. That's a kind of rule of thumb of the Trump presidency, or so it seems to me.
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| top, right corner |
Or this one: Hij loopt alsof hij het vuur in zijn arse hieft--
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| center, far top |
Which is to say, if you eat fire, don't be at all surprised if you shit sparks.
I'm guessing we're a long ways from out of this horror.
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