Photo by Robert Anders | CC BY 2.0
A future history of the G20 in Hamburg might start with a question posed by President Donald Trump – actually his speechwriter – a few days earlier in Warsaw:
“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.”
What initially amounted to a juvenile/reductionist clash of civilizations tirade written by Stephen Miller – the same one who penned the “American carnage” epic on Trump’s inauguration as well as the original Muslim travel ban – might actually have found some answers in Hamburg.
The G20 as a whole was a noxious military dystopia disguised as a global summit. “Welcome to Hell” and other assorted protests, on multiple levels, were sort of answering another Trump-in-Warsaw question; “Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”
While leaders worked the cosseted rooms, gossiped, listened to the Ode to Joy and indulged in the proverbial banquet, outside there was burning and looting; a sort of vicious, street-level commentary not only about their concept of “civilization” but also about Trump-in-Warsaw conveniently forgetting to say that it’s US and NATO’s “policies” which end up generating the terror blowback that threaten “civilization”, “our values” and our “will to survive”.
It will get worse. Starting next year, a Bundeswehr/NATO joint production, a…