We all know the story of Potemkin villages. They were supposedly erected to provide a visiting Russian monarch a view of prosperous peasant life in stark contrast to the miserable reality of feudal Russia.
Last week the Indian government put up a wall on President Trump’s motorcade route into Delhi. The purpose? To show off Indian wall technology? To support Trump’s demand for a border wall? To provide a place to hang welcoming or patriotic signage?
Actually, none of the above. The Modi government built the wall so that Trump’s eyes would not have to behold the miserable reality of modern India, a slum.
It is inconceivable that any other president of the past century would be so incurious as to not want to know what was behind it. Yet we have no indication he so much as asked. It was written, “all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice …, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”
Trump, the farce, the would-be tsar – the tsimpleton tsar.
WILLIAM POLITT
Weare