And so this is a brand-new year! Time to hope for being better and for a better year all round. While the clock was relentlessly ticking away, in the last hours of 2017, each of us tried to take stock. We hope we have achieved as much as we could, in the circumstances we happen to be. Our small or big achievements, although they matter enormously to us individually, have no significance in the greater scheme of things. Except for those who are in a position of power, with the ubiquitous camera lenses focused on them, watching their next move.
All last year, the world has been holding its breath, while Donald Trump skipped from blunder to blunder. Provoking the North Korean dictator, recklessly announcing the acknowledgement of Jerusalem as capital city of Israel..... and that's only to mention foreign policy decisions. Is it better or worse than George W. Bush starting a war against Iraq under false pretences? There seemed to be more predictability in the latter. I asked my students whether they were scared by what might happen next and, on the whole, they were less scared than a year ago as they were reassured by the fact that Congress has seemed to oppose D. Trump's every move and also by the attitude of other world leaders who won't bow to him.
Brexit is another worry. Theresa May is really in a quandery. Nobody had told British citizens that leaving the EU would be a messy, costly, almost impossible thing to achieve. Ukip and Boris Johnson had not thought anything through when they harangued the crowds with their popularity-seeking arguments against the EU. A year and a half have gone by since the referendum and negotiations haven't really progressed. It looks like the UK still wants its cake and eat it. As was the case before the referendum. To be out of the EU, but in when it suits. Meanwhile this embarrassing deadlock is weakening both the UK and the EU. So much uncertainty is not good for anyone as the world is much in need of a strong Europe.
Last but not least, Catalonia voted two weeks ago and what the results confirmed was its profound division into two groups roughly equal in numbers: those in favour of independence and those wanting to remain Spanish. Catalonia will suffer socially and economically if those two groups can't find a common ground and they do not seem to be about to.
All in all, 2017 has been a painful illustration of the severe limitations of politics; no politician ever delivers the goods he or she promised. Although, perhaps, once upon a time, one did. 2018 is beginning with the new movie about Winston Churchill:
Darkest hour. Churchill's pledge to the British people at the start of the war was not a lie: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat". Churchill was fully aware of the gravity and solemnity of the moment and he dared talk plainly and honestly. What an inspiration for 2018!
