Light the fuse

Not the great New Zealand mobilisation novel

An early work-in-progress dedicated to helping,
circuitously, precipitate the Great Mobilisation

Dare to be wise!
Kant

Chapter 19

Donald the Great…Summonsing enormous effort to not descend to Donald’s malignant-narcissistic, expletive-laden level, I offer simply: “disappointment.”

Contents
author Cimino
work-in-progress published 20260715 
footnoted 20260000 

When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.

Chatham House Rule, The Royal Institute of International Affairs

Hound of Heaven-on-Earth: Prior to his death in 1955, Lionel Curtis wouldn’t have had the slightest difficulty warning that the swamp that was, even then, the us Congress, rather than being drained, could today be the domain of gold-leafed demagoguery and crypto-fraudulent nepo­tism. Nonetheless, had Curtis known that the rapid unravelling of a rules-based world order played out, led by a de­pravedly indifferent us administration, and without American citizens fighting to return power to the people, it would surely have broken his 83-year-old heart. To the end, Curtis hounded his fellow diplomats to seek solutions that built towards greater regional and global federalisation, to progressively deny the ilk of Netanyahu and his enablers the opportunity to wage war on neighbouring states. image Chatham House

Cimino had hoped to avoid direct mention of the man or his reign of error, much less name a chapter for him. Churchill, in his pre-Poland-invasion alarm-sounding campaign, had serially failed to suf­fi­ciently convince his par­lia­men­tary colleagues of the threat of warfare planned, but had he not mentioned the name of its principal architect—Hitler—his rhetoric subsequently would not have resounded half as convincingly, in Britain’s darkest hour.

Now that Trump has demonstrated the deadliness of his criminal demagoguery at home and abroad, his im­me­di­ate impeachment and successful conviction is the only measure by which the United States—the once-greatest hope for world democracy—can be re­deem­ed. Tragically, the American empire lost its guardrails long before Trump had finally been convincedprincipally by Roger Stone he could be elected the republic’s com­man­der-in-chief. Demonising Trump for the destruction of the briefly great us democracy is to credit him with kicking down a door that had already been unhinged by generations of chronically corrupt Democratic–Republican party representatives, officials, and functionaries. Cimino, mean­while, despaired at the indulgence of climate protestors demonising current fossil-fuel suppliers while cheerleading a skin-deep, battery-power-every­thing-that-can-be-battery-powered doctrine that still leaves fossil fuels to do the heavy lifting whilst simultaneously sal­vaging a sur­viv­able climate—supposing such a mission still proves to be possible. Confoundingly, just as in war, the first casualty of climate action was truth.

If either nation is to lead the beyond-urgent Great Mobilisation charge, the draining of their respective putatively-democratic democracy swamps is an equally urgent imperative for Aotearoa and the United States. Hands down, to have the best chance of salvaging a survivable climate, the leading nation needs to be the United States. But that, rather than leading the build­ing of a great, post-carbon civilisation, the world’s superpower is sliding into autocracy and inexorably ceding its place to rampantly super-developing China, represents massive momentum into a deepening, and all too potentially inextricable, Great 3rd Millennium Polycrisis.

Whether full-blown Trumpists, his grudging supporters, or those who abhorred just about every aspect of the man’s character, politics, greed, dic­ta­to­r­ial proclivities etcetera, disappointment  probably most encompassingly describes how most evaluate Trump 2.0, and the forever, Israeli/US-Iran War he’d plunged haplessly into. While November’s midterms are shaping up for a Republican drubbing, nor are they likely to see the two-thirds Democratic Senate majority necessary to remove Trump from office via impeachment and conviction. If, however, on top of a hostile Congress, his patent lack of mental fitness and disastrous commander-in-chief actions result in a 25th Amend­ment, Section 4 removal from office, the world might find the courage to cease cowering before a lone madman, abolish warfare and mount the beyond-urgent Great Mobilisation.

Chance, of course, would be a very fine thing indeed, and the world’s first full democracy, Aotearoa, which has long had the incentive to become the land of free, fair, and frequent elections has every excuse to finally begin reversing its democratic backsliding, not least of all to atone for its failure to democratically forge a constitution worthy of the hastily thrown together twin treaty-founding doc­u­ments that have chronically divided, rather than united, the benighted nation. If New Zealand’s efforts proved to be…
To be continued…

Long reign of reign-of-error While the musical comedy A Reign of Error —punning on the century-earlier Reign of Terror5 September 1793 – 27 July 1794, First French Republic—was performed on Broadway in 1899, the reign-of-error pun may well be ancient. Be that as it may, its parting-shot use by foreign affairs commentator Simon Tisdall on 17 May 2026 is particularly deft, given the subject matter: the respective last-gasp terrorising by Trump–Netanyahu–Putin. Readers of The Guardian  who may have wondered at the subeditorial missed opportunity to feature the pun in the headline need, however, look no further than The Associated Press  and Dr Zac Gershberg’s devastatingly prescient 2 February 2017 Trump’s Reign of Error, Season 1 . And while Trump’s Reign of Error, Season 2  might have made for an even more biting and entertaining follow-up, Gershberg and Dr Sean Illing’s The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion  promises an entirely fresh perspective to the in­suf­fi­ciently acknowledged, Sisyphean requirement, generation by generation, for fresh, young de­mo­c­ra­tic communities to be built—that atrophy is a feature of democracy, rather than a flaw. But more crucially, the freedoms democracy demands, which include the freedom for the likes of Trump’s Truth Social  to operate, providing the freedom  for all manner of dastardly demagoguery:

What we’re witnessing is a convergence of forces unleashed by novel media and popularist rhetorical styles that implode democracy from within.

As useful as the The Paradox of Democracy  might prove to be to Great 3rd Millennium Polycrisis academics and analysts, it, not surprisingly, doesn’t promise to provide the joined-up pathway audaciously proposed by Light the Fuse , from democratic fundraising through profound democratisation …
To be continued…
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