AMERICA: LAND OF OPPORTUNITY

If you’ve ever doubted that America is the land of opportunity, just look at the current political landscape: a steak-and-kidney pudding is leader of the free world, and its second-in-command looks suspiciously like a garden gnome liberated from an underwhelming Ohio yard sale. In a nation where pastries can run for office and lawn ornaments sit an accurate bullet away from power, the only things less predictable than U.S. politics are the earths various conflict conundrums this odd couple have dedicated themselves to solving. Unless you count a steamy evening with STD factory Stormy Daniels and being repeatedly urinated on by a neighbourhood Labrador — they appeared to have all the conflict resolution experience of, well, a steak-and-kidney pudding and a garden gnome. But they're doing it, they're actually doing it.

Against all odds — and in direct violation of everything we thought we knew about pastries and lawn ornaments — the pair has somehow chalked up a string of diplomatic wins. A route to peace has been paved between Armenia and Azerbaijan, they helped cool tensions between Pakistan and India, and convinced Egypt and Ethiopia to negotiate over a dam without anyone throwing a sandal. It’s the kind of progress that makes you wonder whether we’ve underestimated them. Then the mother of all victories, a ceasefire between perennial troublemakers Palestine and Israel — leading to the release of hostages, a withdrawal (mostly) of roving slaughterhouse the I.D.F and a very pally lock-in with fawning members of the Knesset. 

Dealing with the suspiciously deep-sea Vladimir Putin and his merry band of death cultists will make the challenges in the middle-east feel like a quick wank into a sports sock. Still regularly and indiscriminately bombing the Ukraine, the Russian shark has barely been willing to drop the severed leg from its mouth long enough for a quick chat, let alone a protracted ceasefire negotiation. The battle weary Volodymyr Zelenskyy must be wondering why his years doing impressions and arsing about on Ukrainian television haven't prepared him better for the infested waters of foreign policy and international relations — himself elected off the back of some underhand American 'opportunity'.

Absurdity aside — the scandals, the missteps and the sheer cosmic unlikeliness of it all — there is something distinctly American making the worlds problems seem surmountable. Call it naïveté, call it delusion, call it blind optimism, but it’s the same force that built the myth of the country these oddballs lead; that even in the ugliest moments, there’s a chance — however faint — that things might just get better. Because if the land of opportunity can make a steak-and-kidney pudding the president and a garden gnome its second in command, then surely anything is possible.

I'm starting to believe.