Shared with dVerse MTB: The Roundel
*’The USA has met its enemy and it is the USA’ was taken from a Substack article I was reading but forgot to note the link.
Every Dog – 16th November 2025
“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” – Andre Gide
1994ever 
There is actually some truth to the enemy within… I think pointing at yourself.
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Bullet meet foot
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” the empire is fading away.” as they inevitably do but
surely the enemy within is the self-hate bug – – we are being bitten by it both sides of the Atlantic
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The snake eating its tail.
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ahh but that is the Ouroboros which “expresses the unity of all things, material and spiritual, which never disappear but perpetually change form in an eternal cycle of destruction and re-creation.”
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We know which cycle the USA is in 👍
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Great verse 🙌
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Cheers 🙏
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I hope you know what I mean when I say this feels like a seasonal poem. We are in the dead of winter, but hope for spring is eternal. I’m not giving up just yet.
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Well, life will go on. At least most of us are not in danger of genocide or any kind of violent death.
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Yes, Li! “Now is the winter of our discontent” and yet so many are working to bring about a spring, a new day when the bitterness and craven disregard for truth, dignity and humanity are replaced with integrity, compassion and understanding.
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❤
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I am impressed by how many people used the Chaucerian Roundel to address contemporary issues and I love your take Shaun! I could not believe when USAID was cancelled – and here in Britain, the government is whittling away the BBC World Service – do they not understand the benefits of soft power – but the US under Trump is all about short termism and inward looking…
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Cheers Andrew 🙏
USAID has been misused as a propaganda tool and funded violent colour revolutions against sovereign nations that are not in line with USA’s supposed rules-based order. The most egregious recent example being the Hong Kong riots. USAID is/was far away from it’s stated mandate.
The BBC too has just become another western propaganda tool and is considered a joke in many other countries now.
So in this case, I think inward-looking is a good result. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be including much self-reflection!
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A political roundel … HOORAY!!!! The enemy within, yes.
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Thanks Helen 🙏
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Interesting post to find at a US-based international web site.
Two favorite Trump stories seem to explain a lot:
1. Signs at hand level with Braille embossed messages were new in the 1980s. Trump showed people around a new hotel he was building. A reporter expressed surprise that the elevators had older-style signs with no Braille. Trump said that people who stayed in HIS hotels wouldn’t have disabilities. While the news media were flapping and squawking, Trump staff quietly updated the signs in the elevators and elsewhere around the building.
2. During the first Trump administration I didn’t follow him or post about him on Twitter, which was very lively back then. Someone else commented on Trump’s ingratitude to a Cabinet Secretary. I replied that if Trump showed comparable ingratitude to another Secretary, Carson, he’d be challenging Bill Clinton for the title of “King of Tacky.” (Carson was a very popular figure whose endorsement had done much for Trump’s campaign.) Someone then shared a tweet in which Trump proposed to blame Secretary Carson for something and ask him to resign. I replied, “King of Tacky!” I have no idea how many other people expressed this idea, or whether one camera-shy activist was really enough to get the message through. In any case Carson was not asked to resign.
I think Trump feeds on the contempt of the technorati. He loves telling his fans how arrogant and contemptuous we are–toward him and presumably toward them. You wouldn’t think he’d know or care what you or I say about him, but he does. However rich and powerful he gets, he’s still an American; at school his type love to annoy more intellectual types because they can’t get our approval. I prefer to leave him alone unless and until I can say something good about him.
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I’m curious about your first comment Priscilla. Is not common to see posts like this?
The first story seems to highlight Trump quite well. Say something outrageous (and possible his true feeling) but then do the right thing silently once aware. That can be spun in the future too. “I made sure my hotels were open to all.”
I tend to agree with your final assessment about ‘If you have nothing good to say then say nothing at all.’
In my poem I don’t mention Trump and I don’t equate Trump specifically with the USA. It’s been a long road for the USA.
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Well written, and sadly truth.
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Thanks Sara 🙏
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