Charles III\u2019s subtle, much needed history lesson delivered the US some tough love. But will Trump get the message?<\/p>\n
Of the many jokes cracked by King Charles during his visit to Washington, the one recalling the definitive 18th-century Anglo-French contest for dominion over the New World was the most pointed. Speaking at a state banquet<\/a> in the White House, Charles turned to Donald Trump and said: \u201cYou recently commented, Mr President, that if it were not for the United States, European countries would be speaking German. Dare I say that, if it wasn\u2019t for us, you\u2019d be speaking French<\/a>!\u201d<\/p>\n Did Trump get it? Who knows? Broadly speaking, history, even their own, is not most Americans\u2019 favourite subject. A forward-looking people, they do not dwell on the past, nor hanker after the illusory felicities of former glories. While generations of Britons still wallow in nostalgia for Spitfires, Churchill and Vera Lynn (and beating the French), Americans typically seek new metaphorical mountains to climb. Theirs is a positive outlook, on the whole. Except, under Trump, it has twisted into a revived, ugly version of US \u201cmanifest destiny<\/a>\u201d imperialism.<\/p>\n Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Charles III\u2019s subtle, much needed history lesson delivered the US some tough love. But will Trump get the message? Of the many jokes cracked by King Charles during his visit to Washington, the one recalling the definitive 18th-century Anglo-French contest for dominion over the New World was the most pointed. Speaking at a state banquet … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}