Thirst for a clash of civilizations
By Eugene Robinson
July 6 at 7:35 PM
... The speech .. delivered Thursday .. might have been appropriate when .. Europe’s great powers held dominion over “lesser” peoples around the globe ...
“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive,” the president said ...
Trump added what he probably thought of as a Churchillian flourish: “I declare today for the world to hear that the West will never, ever be broken. Our values will prevail. Our people will thrive. And our civilization will triumph.”
Triumph over whom? Trump ... went on to add .. — weirdly — “the steady creep of government bureaucracy” to the list. It is appalling that the president would describe patriotic public servants as a kind of fifth column that “drains the vitality and wealth of the people,” and I guess some precious bodily fluids as well.
... If the president read .. he’d know that for most of the past 2,000 years, China and India were the world’s leading economic powers and Europe was a relatively primitive backwater ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-dangerous-thirst-for-a-clash-of-civilizations/2017/07/06/fb5398ea-6282-11e7-a4f7-af34fc1d9d39_story.html?utm_term=.c808ad82551a
