Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

So wrote the American satirist H. L. Mencken almost a century ago. Herr Drumpf is no moron, far from it. As his inauguration day approached, however, I agreed with my ex-wife that there would be little sense in using my blog to add to the fully justified cacophony of dismay sure to be expressed by writers more skilled and insightful than I.

But as January 2017 ended I found myself thinking back not a hundred years but just eighty. Then, too, there were many here in Germany who found the enthusiasm of ‘plain folks’ for the absurd strutting Austrian so laughable that they preferred to maintain a dignified silence and wait until the madness abated.

I find that worth bearing in mind.