Builders Merchants Journal – BMJ Publishing to Builders Merchants and the UK merchanting industry for more than 95 years
Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience
Ever get that sense that you spoke too soon? This time last week I was writing about the surprising fact that there appeared to have been a ceasefire called in the (current) Middle East war. About the news that President Trump had called his attack dogs back from Iran, and wouldn’t, after all, be obliterating an entire culture and civilisation. Oh, and that oil prices had returned to below $95 a barrel.
They said it couldn’t last…they were right. So, here we are again, with oil prices once again above the magic $100 dollars a barrel point, diesel heading for £2 a litre, the Straits of Hormuz closed or blockaded or whatever, and President Trump picking a fight with the Pope.
Wait, say what now?
It’s not as though there haven’t been disagreements – big ones – with the papacy throughout history. Let me just channel my inner Dominic Sandbrook (The Rest is History guy) here: Pope Leo IX led an army against Norman invaders (it didn’t end well for him), Pope Julius II actually personally commanded and led a papal army into battle, and Pope Boniface VIII claimed supreme command over Europe’s kings in 1302. In retaliation, he was captured by the French King Philip IV and then beaten to death.
Plus, of course, closer to home, we had Pope Clement VII whose refusal to grant an annulment of marriage to our own dear Henry the Eighth changed the course of English, and eventually, British history.
All these fights were, basically, about power, actual power, and with it money, riches and land. The spat that Trump has invented with Pope Leo X1V is more of a playground argument, over who agrees or doesn’t agree with whom.
Pope Leo X1V has been critical of the US-Israeli war on Iran and has previously questioned the Trump administration’s approach to immigration. Trump, presumably thinks that Pope Leo being the first ever US-born Pope, he really should owe the President rather more respect. Maybe he thinks he could do the job better himself. “I could have been Pope if I’d wanted to be. I’d be the greatest Pope there ever was. The popiest Pope that history had ever seen.” You just know he’s said that to his team.
Pope Leo is reported to have said that a “delusion of omnipotence” was fuelling the US-Israeli war in Iran. See it, say it.
It would be quite amusing, especially the image, now deleted and rebranded as a ‘joke’ that Trump posted of himself in the guise of Christ healing the sick, were it not for the fact that every day the conflict is prolonged causes more economic problems and puts more Iranian civilians in the line of fire. Already one repercussion for the UK is that, according to the IMF, we will be the hardest hit by all this, as we are a net importer of energy. Time to get investing in those wind turbines and solar panels, guys.
