Sunday, March 6, 2022
Saturday, March 5, 2022
1273. The Internet is So Cruel, Wouldn't You Say Donald?
Taken from a French magazine (Le Point), dating from 2016 during the campaign for U.S. presidency:
Nestled in the German vineyards, Kallstadt gave America Donald Trump. But the village takes more pride in its specialty, stuffed pork belly, than in the virulent Republican candidate.
"If he becomes president, let's wait and see what he does for America and the world. Then maybe we'll hang a plaque," concedes Thomas Jaworek, the mayor of this town of 1,200 inhabitants in southwestern Germany, without enthusiasm.
Even Hans-Joachim Bender, a 74-year-old former winegrower and distant cousin of Donald Trump, dismisses the subject with a scathing: "I'm not a fan of the pipe".
"I find Hillary (Clinton, the Democratic candidate) a little less... radical," continues the retiree, who is also descended from the other famous Kallstadt emigre, the founder of the Heinz ketchup empire.
The Trump family has long claimed to be of Swedish descent, to spare themselves a widespread anti-German sentiment in the United States in the wake of the two world wars and the Holocaust.
Yet the grandfather of the Republican billionaire, Friedrich Trump, grew up in Kallstadt before crossing the Atlantic to join his sisters at age 16, in 1885, leaving a simple note on the family table. (Editor's note: was he into his sister just as Freud was into his mother?)
Once in New York, the teenager headed west and opened taverns offering food, drink and female companionship to lonely gold seekers, says Gwenda Blair, one of Donald Trump's biographers.
Friedrich Trump Americanized his first name, which became Frederick, and sent nuggets to his sisters in New York, which they invested in real estate, laying the foundation for the family fortune.
Now rich, the young man returned to Kallstadt to marry the daughter of his former neighbors, Elisabeth Christ, who grew up across the street from him on the modest Freinsheimer Strasse, then called Engelsgasse ("Angel's Way").
Driven by homesickness, the couple tried to settle in their Rhineland village. But as Frederick did not do his military service, he was forced to return to New York, with his wife then about to give birth, according to historian Roland Paul.
"The people of Kallstadt are very reliable and strong and that's how I feel - I'm strong and I'm reliable," the real estate tycoon boasted in 2014 in a documentary by Simone Wendel, "The Kings of Kallstadt."
Promising to honor the village with a visit on his next trip to Germany, Donald Trump said he was "proud of his German blood - no doubt about it."
The reciprocal is less obvious, as Kallstadt, the kingdom of fresh white wines and hiking, is not very quick to mention its distant offspring, to whom no street name pays tribute.
The local newspaper did have fun during the last carnival announcing that Trump would build a giant gold tower to dwarf the village steeple, topped with a 55th-floor terrace to host an annual wine festival.
But the real local celebrity is the pork belly stuffed with palatine ("Saumagen"), which gives its name to a series of quaint establishments including the Pork Belly Cellar, the Pork Belly Bar and the Pork Belly Paradise.
Behind the counter of the "Paradise", Edelgard Kellermann, 62 years old, concedes with a smile that the Trump phenomenon brings visitors from as far away as Vietnam and "avoids that we get too bored around here".
But her face darkens when asked about Trump's desire to build an anti-migrant wall on the Mexican border or his attacks on Chancellor Angela Merkel for her refugee policy.
"Mr. Trump is the descendant of a refugee - his forefathers fled for economic reasons, to have a better life. He benefited from that and should give others the same chance," the shopkeeper argues, calling the candidate a "demagogue."
Kallstadt welcomed its first asylum seekers last month, a Syrian family of four "who lived in refugee camps for a long time," the mayor points out. "This is a good thing and we are happy about it."
Oh, only to think about those who dared doubting about Obama's rights at being elected President, yet disregarding Trump's ascendants who fled their own German country solely to escape from their army duty. It seems that some genes won't lie. Still, the stuffed pork belly crossed the Atlantic, it seems...
1272. Just a copy/paste
Sometimes a simple meme tells a lot. Including about hopes.
Thank you Matthew for relaying this picture, along with your comment:
My two cents are that, in the meantime, both the Ukrainian and the Russian people are doomed to suffer from a few men's destructive delusions. Men who are currently spreading seeds of future resentment and hatred(*).
I know it's a simplistic way of putting things, still:
19th century had Napoleon
20th century had Hitler
21st century comes up with Putin
Who's to be the next apocalypse horseman?
Let's hope it will be Mother Nature herself, either through the eradication of us humans or by having us - at last - deserving the "sapiens" we never really proved to be worth about until now.
(*) History repeating itself, over and over again. This may be the overall landmark of a species whose failures surpass whatever achievement it brags about.
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