Essays in Idleness

For Christmas this year, at the United Nations, the USA will be “taking names.” The vote comes tomorrow, on a resolution to condemn the United States in the General Assembly for moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital, which is Jerusalem. With her characteristic charm and candour, Nikki Haley mentioned this yesterday. She’ll be taking the names of those who are naughty or nice, to my favourite superpower.

For years, decades, centuries it seems, the United States has been serving not only as sugar daddy to NATO and the like, but as meals-on-wheels to most of the world’s nasty little third-world despotisms — governed, almost invariably, by Leftists of some sort. And, getting abuse in return, instead of gratitude, for all this “foreign aid.” We might want to refer the matter to the ACLU, which objects to Christian displays in public. By comparison to any other world power, the USA has been downright Franciscan. Too, the Americans not only host but generously fund UN operations, at cost not only to their national Treasury, but to the municipal services of the City of New York. And again, they get all this lip in return. Why, Santa, why?

The fear, of course, is that if the Americans don’t pay, the Russians and Chinese will step into the breach. But this is just what we should want. An important part of the late Mr Reagan’s strategy, in winning the Cold War, was to assist the USSR in piling up expenses. The arms race also helped. As the brilliant George P. Schultz explained, much that Washington could afford, overstretched Moscow. Thus the military spending spree, until they said, “Uncle.”

As for Nikki Haley, well, I have been half in love with her since the day, four Christmases ago, when a friend showed me a Facebook post by the Governor of South Carolina, as she then was. “I must have been good, Santa gave me a Beretta PX4 Storm,” she boasted, with a picture of this elegant little firearm, which fits so nicely in a lady’s purse. The sort of thing a woman needs, I now reflect, while escorting Harvey Weinstein to the police station, in his pajamas. (After calling the tabloids to come and take pictures.) A very pretty pistol indeed: the Italians sure know how to design them. And engineer them, too: packs an even bigger punch than Saint Nicholas of Myra.

I love it when the Americans go John Wayne. It bodes well for the peace of the world. Or perhaps, Clint Eastwood in his Spaghetti Westerns (I don’t know much about movies). For now that Hollywood has gone over entirely to the dark side, we need better theatre from Uncle Sam. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. And some of the best men are women.