I stayed in Paris only three days, and the noise, etc., of Paris had such a bad effect on me that I thought it wise for my head’s sake to fly to the country...
(Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Paul Gauguin, Auvers-sur-Oise, c. 17 June 1890)
In black silk, head covered over in a yellow and white scarf, she hobbles in pain down the street. An elderly woman, her feet and four toes had been mangled and bound as an infant, a relic of yesteryear's Confucian ideal of elite Han beauty—a bizarre and aberrant statement of protest against the bestial behavior of the Manchu barbarians—that foot fetish of the three to five-inch lotus root.
In January 1984, Dr. Seuss, one of the most popular authors of children’s books ever, who sold hundreds of millions of copies of his books, published The Butter Battle Book. It was a totally unexpected book from a children’s author―an overt political satire and protest against the nuclear arms race. Dr. Seuss considered it his best book, but one that ends pessimistically unlike most of his others. The Butter Battle book is full of references to the US-Soviet Cold War, from the building of the Berlin Wall to the deployment of more and more kinds of “advanced” weaponry. The main characters are members of the Yooks, who appear to represent the US and NATO countries, while the antagonists, the Zooks, appear to represent the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries.
Despite the self-congratulatory tone of both his Davos Speech and State of the Union Address, President Trump has not yet obtained the confidence of the leaderships of major US allies or their populations. Nor has Trump been able to point the way to the establishment of more positive diplomatic relations with American rivals that could guarantee global peace in the long term. After a full year in office, Trump’s dealings with both US allies and rivals have not yet appeared to possess any discernible “method.” Nor is there any true Trump “doctrine” except for a vague and ill-defined ideological conception of “America First” whose proclaimed aim is nuclear superiority and “unmatched power”—in the presumption that “weakness is the surest path to conflict.”