Sight Unseen

A blind expat's musings on life, death and the Trump era

99 posts and counting

My name is Christopher Winner. I am an American citizen who has lived in Europe, predominantly Rome, for nearly half a century, and I founded The American | In Italia in 2004. I also began a column titled “Area 51,” which exists to this day. But, in 2015, I was diagnosed with glaucoma and have gradually lost my sight. The thoughts and comments you read below are snippets of my thinking in these challenging times and are dictated to co-managing editor Leigh Smith. See also my personal website.

Christopher P. Winner • May 25, 2026 at 8:44 pm

Chocolate tricks: On his maiden visit to Greenland, the icy Atlantic island the United States covets for what it calls “security reasons,” Jeff Landry, the American special envoy and also governor of the state of Louisiana, played Pied Piper. He met with Greenland’s youthful prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, again pitching the line that Greenland, a semi-autonomous province of Denmark, would be a much better place if run by an American real-estate tycoon–turned president. He then took to the streets of Nuuk, the island’s small capital, bearing chocolates for kids and a promise of more goodies if they ever made it to Baton Rouge, which somehow they would if only the island belonged to the USA. Dressed for his city promenade in combat camouflage, he was, in effect, playing the role of a benevolent and patronizing plantation owner eager to take over a neighbor’s cotton fields, by force if necessary. He even brought along his personal physician to support the White House claim that Greenland cannot take care of its sick. Mussolini and Hitler used similar strategies in Albania and Austria, offering symbolic gifts if these countries would only perceive the greater good borne by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. They resisted the pied pipering of that era and were invaded as a result. Sweets aside, Greenland now risks a similar fate. But more troubling perhaps is the inappropriate and condescending approach to which Washington seems wed. Regrettably, this president’s men have no historical memory. They cannot look back to a time when American troops, seen by most Europeans as liberators, handed out bushels of chocolate bars to eager children who swarmed their advancing tanks toward the end of World War II. In those days, Hershey bar–handouts stood for American goodness and decency. No longer.

Christopher P. Winner • May 24, 2026 at 6:58 pm

“Welcome to Israel!” My mother was born into an affluent Warsaw family on Christmas Day 1921. When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, her teenage life was turned on end. Her brother died fighting the Germans, her sister died after contracting typhus, and her father was detained by the Gestapo. In January 1940, she and her mother absconded to Rome using false papers. Only once did my mother speak of the three cruel months before her escape to Rome, an Axis “open city.” This came in 1978, after the election of a Polish pope brought her to tears. She told me that in the autumn of the Nazi invasion, her Warsaw district fell under the jurisdiction of an sadistic SS captain who from his jeep, using a megaphone, would shout at cowering civilians, “Welcome to the Reich. We are the masters here.” Many were arrested on the spot. Some were blindfolded and left to stumble before they were summarily executed. She never again spoke of that time, which she spent a lifetime hiding even from her closest friends. But now, some ninety years later, to my horror, I hear the same phrasing, this time spoken by a prominent Jewish government official. In a widely circulated video, national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of several extreme right figures in the Israeli cabinet, is heard berating detained activists from a flotilla attempting to bring aid to Gaza’s dispossessed, something Israel forbids. “Welcome to Israel; we are the masters here,” he proudly tells his captives in Hebrew. (Some have suggested the word “masters” should be translated as “landlords,” but under the circumstances, it makes little difference.) Though his remarks were roundly criticized in Israel and in Europe, he was not — and this is significant — compelled to apologize, nor was he asked to resign. He is only 50 and therefore may have the luxury of forgetting history. The awful truth is that Jewish extremism and that of the Reich can overlap. I can only be glad that my Catholic mother, a true admirer of a free world headed by a decent America as well as an admirer of Israel, died decades before cockroaches and their ilk returned to blacken the political landscape.

Christopher P. Winner • May 23, 2026 at 10:07 pm

Puppeteers: In separate arenas, the White House is again reverting to blackmail and bullying to achieve desired goals. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban emigrants and a native Spanish speaker, has told his kin that America has nothing to do with the island’s suffering, this despite a months-long naval blockade that has starved Cuba of both fuel and medical supplies. The Communist regime was to blame for any suffering, he said, and the blockade was simply exacerbating age-old problems that only a political upheaval could repair. To make its point, the United States issued an arrest warrant for 94-year-old Raul Castro, who with his brother, Fidel, and others brought down a U.S.-backed dictatorship in 1959. In Europe, the president himself has said he will withdraw thousands of troops from NATO member states to punish the alliance for failing to embrace his war on Iran, a war he started, and join in a military plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Amid this crisis-like uncertainty, Russia and Belarus just completed three days of opportunistic nuclear drills, of the kind that once would have put NATO on high alert. On the domestic front, the threat of license revocation has forced venerable network CBS to divorce Stephen Colbert, a popular late-night satirist who refused to relent in his criticism of the White House. More such heavy-handed censorship is likely to follow. In bare bones terms, this president cannot distinguish between right and wrong and, with Israel, disdains all international law, undoing the political and social contract that in another era would likely have led to massive Washington street protests. But no such protests are in the wings, in part because the post-9/11 era, with its color-coded terrorist alerts and its draconian Patriot Act, created a “be very afraid” ethos that made citizens reluctant to challenge presidential authority. This is no longer Make America Great Again, but America, reinvented to suit a puppeteer whose global show some may criticize but all defer to.

Christopher P. Winner • May 19, 2026 at 10:16 pm

Beautiful endgame: The beautiful game as practiced by Pelé, Eusébio, Beckenbauer, Maradona, and others is now officially a relic. FIFA ended a more innocent era when it recently announced a Super Bowl–like musical extravaganza at halftime of the 2026 World Cup final to be played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, kowtowing to the now-global need for incessant stimulation. This new long break will, by its protracted nature, mar the diction and syntax of a wide-open game once played and filmed without commercial interruption. For years, American television sponsors had pressed for NFL-like breaks, but FIFA, still governed by purists, adamantly resisted. If advertisers required means to monetize the game, and what an ugly verb that is, they could use the fringes of television screens to do so. That began changing early this century, when teams, players, and stadiums began bowing to all manner of visible sponsorship. These days, some club players resemble Formula One drivers, ad logos stitched to every seam. More recently came the introduction of three-minute water breaks, allegedly to cool players on hot days but in fact another monetizing strategy since players of all nations had endured heat and rain since the game’s inception. In fairness, this is no longer Pelé’s world, one in which some players casually smoked at the half. Some of today’s players are millionaires many times over. Attention spans are now shorter, smartphones at all times revved up, so a Madonna at the half makes sense — as do outrageously high ticket prices. I once spoke to Italian star Giorgio Chinaglia, who in his waning years defected from Rome club Lazio to play alongside Pele in the short-lived 1970s North American Soccer League. What did he think of it all? “Fine,” he said, “but too much spectacle,” by which he meant cheerleaders and distracting fireworks. “We are here to play for those who love the game,” the beautiful game, part of whose once-naive heart is busily being carved out.

Christopher P. Winner • May 16, 2026 at 7:28 pm

Paola: In the early summer of 1970, I took a cruise to the Caribbean aboard the Italian liner Giulio Cesare. I was with my father, who was recovering from the cancer that would return to kill him. He called the trip a reprieve from the “perils of lived life.” Onboard I met a beautiful and well-heeled girl from Milan, Paola, who, like me, was 17. A tomboy with short-cropped hair and a lilting but at the same time too-adult voice, she was a politically active young woman who hated the American presence in Vietnam and saw Richard Nixon as a dictator who would later spawn more of his ilk because, to her mind, America was a police state in disguise. She looked forward, she said, to joining the Italian Communist party when she turned 18. My crush on her was intense but ephemeral. Though after we docked at Port Everglades, Florida, we exchanged a letter or two, politics still obstructed puppy love. And we lost touch. Six years later, when I was working as a journalist in Rome and both the Communist party and rival far-left fringe groups were ascendantly violent, I opened a Milan newspaper and saw a familiar face. Three armed terrorists had tried to rob a bank. Two had been scared off, but a third had been shot by police and critically injured. Here before me was the black-and-white face of Paola, her private revolution over, and memories of watching the setting Caribbean sun, once and only once holding hands, over for good. Only now, more than 50 years later, has her presidential prophesy come at least partly true.

Christopher P. Winner • May 15, 2026 at 1:24 pm

Into the red: More than fifty years ago an American president ventured for the first time into forbidden Red China. It was political theater of historic proportions. Here was the virulent anti-Communist Richard Nixon having tea in the lair of Communist titan Chairman Mao, by then an old man. There were no tech trillionaires in the mix and China was years removed from adhering to slavish bottom-line values. For that reason, the meeting was an astonishing act of symbolism only. America loved its president for his boldness, and he was reelected later that year, 1972, in a landslide of epic proportions. Mao in turn showed rival and friend Soviet Russia that it could not be discounted in terms of Cold War jockeying. How different it all is today, with Commu-Capitalist China vying with lower-case fascist America, each one high on profit and authoritarianism, old-school narcotics the United States has only recently learned to mix. Then, cultural critics who mocked TV’s growing influence satirically announced the revolution would not be televised. These days, the creators of AI in all seriousness say human beings may come to be optional. Much has changed in fifty years, yes, but the operatic pageantry China is so happy to lay on when it seeks to influence powerful visitors continues, soaked up by a celebrity-felon president and his coterie of moguls in the same way it was by his devious Watergate predecessor.

Christopher P. Winner • May 12, 2026 at 12:44 pm

On hantavirus: Before my diseases stalled me, I crossed the Atlantic 13 times by liner and nearly 400 times by air. My worst maladies were a few colds. But things have changed. There are more passengers, more destinations, and more clever viral strains on the loose, many now more familiar than ever owing to the vulnerabilities of the human immune system. Strains that once preyed mostly on the weak, the sick, and the poor — consider the Spanish Flu — now have greater potency and range. Matters are today even more precarious with an America that all but denies the possibilities of contagion. That said, the time has come for an international body to study and protect against the surge in viral strains. The World Health Organization alone is not enough. This body could be called the Global Disease Detection Agency and would permit scientists, physicians, microbiologists, and other experts to collaborate and share information on a regular basis so that governments around the world could keep current on evolving strains of viruses and other potential health crises. This global detective force would be subsidized by all nations, within their means. If America has no interest, at least under this government, so be it. Even without it, such a detective force is feasible — if only less was spent on war and tech companies focused their AI not on fake nudes but real viruses. If only this did not seem too much to ask in a world that at times seems more tilted toward viral fantasies than the reality of the rare and shrewd maladies waiting to strike.

Christopher P. Winner • May 10, 2026 at 3:51 pm

Britcrack: The sweeping success of Nigel Farage’s xenophobic Reform UK Party — humiliating both Tories and ruling Labor in nationwide, local, and parliamentary elections — should surprise no one. A decade ago, Farage embarrassed the smug conservative government of David Cameron by unexpectedly driving through the so-called Brexit referendum that forced Britain out of the European Union. His campaign was a masterclass in bogeyman politics that portrayed the country as bureaucratically enslaved to Brussels. Since again taking charge of Reform UK in 2024, he has pressed the same button, this time insisting Britain was “broken,” overrun by Muslim migrants whose religion and customs were suffocating traditional British values. The mollycoddling of refugees set into motion by the Labor party had to end. Mass deportation was needed, and in this he found an unexpected ally in the American president, who also believes aliens are contaminating Britain and Europe — “civilizational erasure” is the going phrase. Suddenly, Farage’s extremist views became mainstream, pushing both Conservatives and Labor into purgatory. That Farage is an Oswald Mosley–like protofascist means nothing to those galvanized by his incessant and persuasive wakeup call. In the very near future, both Tories and Labor may find themselves in the minority, thus ending Britain’s century-old two-party system. Overtaking and filling in for Labor will be the upstart Green Party, a perfect foil for Reform UK. Coming UK governments may witness alliances between Reform UK and the Conservatives on one side of the spectrum and the Greens, Labor, and Liberal Democrats on the other. Meanwhile, Scottish and Welsh nationalist movements are growing in size and scope, suggesting even bigger fractures may lie ahead. All of this triggered by a man, Farage, who hammered home the idea that Britain was a serf and the EU the lord of the manor. Soon, Farage will be a lord in his own right and the UK will join the U.S. as reactionary citadels.

Christopher P. Winner • May 06, 2026 at 12:43 pm

Madness: The New World Order bewilders me. The United States has blockaded Cuba, choking it, but no one cares. Cuba is meaningless. Iran blockades the Strait of Hormuz, essential to the global flow of petroleum, and all are infuriated by its reckless, monstrous Revolutionary Guard. But please, pray tell, what other leverage did Iran have? It has been preemptively attacked twice in a year by Israel and the United States. Its biggest failure has been its unwillingness to capitulate. It is now standing up for itself in the only way the West understands, turning the sanctions it has long labored under on their end. I understand that much of the world loathes Iran’s Islamic regime. But I do not understand, and in fact dislike, double standards, and Iran — which has not directly aggressed on anyone — is the victim of just such a double standard, one imposed not by the bad guy but by the good. Pure madness.

Christopher P. Winner • May 05, 2026 at 12:36 pm

Child’s play: In 1920, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and similar puritanical organizations received a providential assist from the United States Congress in the form of a constitutional amendment barring the production and distribution of alcoholic beverages. All this did, as is often the case, was create a plethora of subversions. The Italian and Irish mobs got to work creating thousands of speakeasies, some disguised as bingo parlors or literary salons. Many built their own stills and the word moonshine became a Roaring Twenties staple. Shipping lines invented binge-drinking “Cruises to Nowhere” in which liners spent a day or two outside U.S. territorial waters. The rich traveled to Cuba while the poor drank wood alcohol and went blind. In a word, Prohibition failed, and Franklin Roosevelt repealed it in 1933, giving a literally depressed nation a chance to again drown its sorrows, this time legally. Unsurprisingly, Alcoholics Anonymous came into being two years later. All this comes to mind when I read of legislation, some already in place, to keep under-16s off addictive social media platforms. While the idea has merit, I see stills and moonshine in the offing in the form of subterranean assistance to children who feel suddenly deprived, with unscrupulous hackers and tech companies playing the role of the mob. Bottom line, the digital genie is out of the gin bottle and, much as I’d like to, I can’t imagine a single way of putting it back in.

Christopher P. Winner • May 01, 2026 at 12:06 pm

Glass Houses: The last time the United States faced an adamant, hard-line enemy, it dropped not one but two atom bombs to make its point and thus remains the only country ever to have developed and detonated nuclear weapon to achieve wartime ends. Such are the bitter ironies history serves up to the righteous.

Christopher P. Winner • April 29, 2026 at 12:57 pm

Azzuri Blues: In 2018, Italy failed to win a berth in the World Cup for the first time in the competition’s nearly century-old history, and the country was understandably shocked. Had Italy not won the cup four times, played in six finals, and appeared regularly in the quarter- and semifinal rounds? For a time, this was excused as an awful glitch, a hubris check. But Italy was then excluded from the 2022 and 2026 Cup, eliminated by mini-minnows North Macedonia and Bosnia. Glitch was gone, and shame took center stage. So what’s gone wrong? The reality is that Italy’s vivaio, or farm system, has run dry. While kids between six and 16 still play in the streets and parks, some have turned to soccer esports and the like for amusement.

Raw talent is now harder to spot. Italian league clubs have made matters worse by coming to depend on mercenary talent from outside Italy. Such talent is cheaper and often better. Finally, unlike France, England, and Germany, Italy has no homegrown Black talent, cutting it out of the powerful African youth market. Few African families choose to settle in Italy, still a deeply racist nation with few faces of color in the public arena. These realities, when bookended, can make for an impoverishment of talent, with no American college-style pipeline to come to the rescue. No one brilliant manager can cure this. The failure is cultural as well as sporting. When Italy last won, in 2006 against France, the nation came to a proud standstill. But names like Zoff, Rossi, Baggio, and Maldini are gone with the wind, which means a great deal of time may pass before Italian players again hoist a World Cup trophy.

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