The Glass Slipper – or Cake and Eat it effect

In a recent TV series that accurately depicted life in the UK in the recent past, one of the female characters said she was “Still waiting for the glass slipper.” She clung to the fairy tale romantic dream of a Prince Charming coming along to sweep her off her feet. In the meantime she cheated on her husband, and destroyed her marriage.

This adolescent, entitled, narcissistic dream typifies the state of denial that exists in Western Society. The belief that we are entitled to everything life can offer – and then more.

Here in Australia we have a female MP who is being investigated for abusing her staff, and her expense entitlements. Her defence is that she is a single Mother with 3 children, and needs her political staffers to babysit, and shop, and to use private limousine services to save time, so that she can do her job.

Sorry lady, you brought 3 children into the world, and that is your priority – not your political career. You cannot climb Everest, dive the Pacific depths, and sail single handed around the World – and still be home for tea. You can’t have your cake and eat it.

And on a global scale that is what is happening. An adolescent, Quixotic view prevails. Dreaming the impossible dream. Seeing the World as it ought to be (in your own egocentric opinion)- and reacting badly when having to deal with the world as it is. Donald Trump, for all his failings, sees the World as it is – and deals with it. And so do the Brexiteers, sick and tired of the Franco-German Axis trying to rule Europe.

Germany, having failed to dominate Europe by military might is consciously, or unconsciously, trying to dominate by financial might. And France, consciously or unconsciously, is collaborating (please read the book “Le Silence de La Mer” by Vercors).

The parallels with the 1930s are alarming. A global financial meltdown, followed by civic unrest, and the rise of right wing nationalism. All because of Germany’s overriding need to dominate (after losing two World Wars), and the French to demonstrate intellectual and cultural superiority because Britain brought down that other European tyrant, Napoleon (the degree of Anglophobia in Europe is frightening). And once again it is down to uncouth Britain to save Europe from itself. The Brexit Remainers are of course Petainists. Old, tired, and afraid of standing on their own two feet.

“Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.”

The overriding theme of my book, THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”, is that Western Governments persist in trying to make the Middle East conform to their view of how it should be – democratic, free market, capitalistic – and not see it as it is. They understand the problems. They do not understand the people.
As one of the characters in one of my stories says, “The Arabs read backwards, they write backwards, and they think backwards.”

Simply stated, their mindset is different. “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”.

You can review and buy my book, THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” and its fictionalizations of real events in the Middle East at:

amazon.com

Or on my publisher’s website:

feedaread.com