Sight Unseen
A blind expat's musings on life, death, and the Trump era
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.
A number of Italian friends of South American descent have strenuously admonished me for failing to appreciate and embrace the “heroic” actions of my president in rightly removing a Venezuelan monster, to which I softly reply that without fail I hold to international law and above all to the sanctity of sovereignty. Violating one or both as if they did not exist or could be bent to accommodate one nation’s sense of the right and the righteous is aggression, plain and simple. Did we kidnap Stalin or Mao? Did we raid Havana and abscond with Fidel Castro? Did we make away with Ayatollah Khomeini or even with Saddam, who was easy pickings in 1991? Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic was properly remanded to the International Criminal Court, which this president treats as detritus. A number of other decades and dictators come to mind, but no matter. Suffice it to say that our shameless commander in chief stands poised to deliver Venezuela’s ample oil fields into eager American hands. This I say to my excited, shoot-first friends who have had a taste of colonial-era force and love it. To which they shrug in disgust at me and busy themselves with champagne corks, as I wonder to myself how high those same corks will fly when Greenland is annexed and Iran returned to New Washington’s sphere of influence. If ever there was any doubt, the America-first gang is headed by a CEO in love with mergers, acquisitions, and hostile takeovers, who represents rule by the one percent. It’s money that matters, brute militarism its handmaiden, and there is no turning back.
The brazen kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on charges he abetted drug trafficking has brought into evidence a pandemic no one knew existed. It is called sycophantism. Aside from America’s traditional rivals Russia and China, few global nations have chosen to decry the move. This is because they fear the American president, who is the lord of their manor, a president who has placed plutocracy where democracy once was. If they vex him, they face sanctions, trade problems, and even visa restrictions on their citizens, so all bow before him rather than express any form of public criticism.
This pandemic is likely to get worse before it gets better — and there is no vaccine in sight.