Saying it without saying it
On Christmas Day, while I dashed home to feed the cats, my wife and mother-in-law watched the annual message delivered by King Charles III. When I returned my wife told me what he’d said. “I think,” she told me, “he may have delivered a coded message intended for the people of America.” Intrigued, I later read the speech. Sure enough, I think there just might be something to that.
The King began by referencing the 80th anniversary of D-Day, celebrated last June 6, the date in 1944 when allied ships mounted history’s largest seaborne invasion. They came to conquer the forces of fascism. They came to retake Europe from the oppressive Nazi menace. “But,” the King continued, “on this Christmas Day, we cannot help but think of those for whom the devastating effects of conflict — in the Middle East, in Central Europe, in Africa and elsewhere — pose a daily threat to so many people’s lives and livelihoods.”
By mentioning the assault on the fascists in Europe 80 years ago in nearly the same breath with conflicts today, including those in “Central Europe,” I think Charles was deliberately linking the two. I think he deliberately (but slyly) didn’t say the word “Ukraine” out loud because he didn’t want to piss off Donald Trump. But his message was clear: he sees the war between Putin and Ukraine through the same lens that he views the historic fight between the Hitler and the allies. And he knows whose side he’s on.
He was sly about it because he necessarily had to be. These days the British monarchy is deliberately apolitical and nonpartisan. But Charles has always been a bit of a rebel. So he delivered a message to satisfy his own inner opinions, a message positively dripping with plausible deniability. I think he said it without saying it: Charles thinks Putin and his allies, including Donald Trump, are historical descendants of the Nazis.
I know it’s a stretch, but it’s exactly the kind of stretch Charles likes to make. And I think he knows it will sail over the dye-job wig of Donald Trump like a well-tossed frisbee. It will remain his private joke.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is planning his very own invasion of Europe. Musk has declared that his “Boring Company” (yes, it’s really called that) can build a three thousand mile supersonic train tunnel on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean from New York to London for 20 billion dollars. That is a stupidly cheap estimate, and he knows it. The feasibility study alone will probably cost that. He should call the project “Operation SeaLion” for good measure.
But it’s just one more example of how out of touch with reality Trump’s team truly is, in a distinctly Dunning-Kruger sense. And it’s for this and twenty billion other reasons that leaders in Europe and the rest of the world are very, very worried. So worried in fact that they won’t say it entirely aloud. So worried that they say it without actually saying it. They fear Trump and his menagerie of loonies for good reason. The world is holding its breath.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.