Niall McCrae
21st Century Wire
What next for Volodomyr Zelensky? Will the puppet of the NATO proxy war against Russia survive to channel more funds into his luxurious retirement, or is his fate already sealed in Shakespearian tragedy?
Zelensky must realise by now that performing as president in a Ukrainian television series (a classic piece of predictive priming) is less onerous than doing the job for real. Yet, Zelensky is still acting. The whole show has been choreographed, with scripts adapted in response to Vladimir Putin and his ‘special military operation’. Adversities from loss of territory to missile strikes in Kyiv are all good material for Western media consumption, justifying the transfer of more and more billions of taxpayers’ money for weapons. ‘The bravest man I have ever seen’, gushed the likes of Julia Hartley-Brewer as the Khaki Dwarf toured Western parliaments, starting with that of war
daddy Boris in Westminster.
As the Russian forces advance by stealth in their four annexed oblasts of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Luhansk and Donbas, after a failed counter offensive and some four hundred thousand Ukrainian soldiers killed, the heroic narrative is simply unsustainable.
Zelensky will be deposed sooner rather than later, and he won’t need dragging out of office. Now that he has made his name to a global audience, Zelensky should up sticks to Hollywood. He’d need a fittingly powerful role – perhaps playing mega financier and nation-slayer George Soros as (to borrow from David Bowie) ‘the man who sold the world’. His gravelly voice would need little polishing to depict such
a ‘cousin in crime’.
An endless ensemble
Another accomplished actor on the world stage is Justin Trudeau. A former drama teacher, Trudeau wowed the Canadian electorate to defeat the Conservatives and is now in his third term. After previous efforts in blackface, Trudeau has played the role of Great Dictator remarkably proficiently for a man who also markets himself as mister woke touchy-feely at Pride rallies.
Trudeau’s days are also numbered, but with his dashing looks he has much to offer. He should return to his Thespian calling, and an ideal part would be as the swashbuckling Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro. His mother could give some intimate tips on the manners of the cigar-wielding communist, having fraternised with Castro some forty-odd years ago. The golden boy of the World Economic Forum has such uncannily similar features that he is mischievously known as “Justin Castreau”.
The Royal Family is a rolling dynasty of stagecraft. William and Harry seem to have nothing else to do but continue a brotherly spat, filling the pages of the Sun and Daily Mail on quiet news days (or when the establishment has something to hide). After tragically losing their mother when they were at a tender age, the two princes emerged as very different and conflicting personalities. While William seems cut from the cloth of European monarchy, Harry presents as an outsider – a rebel with or without a cause.
Harry’s wife Meghan was a B-list actress before she secured a role in the greatest show on Earth. A restless man with baggage to bear, Harry could follow in his other half’s footsteps and settle a few family scores into the bargain. The contested story of his mother and her treatment by the Windsor establishment is ripe for dramatic representation. Harry could change history by giving the masses the alternative truth of late twentieth century palace intrigue. He’d do a scandalising turn as Major James Hewitt, who was privy to many a family secret.
Heir to the throne, William must wait for his septuagenarian father to fulfill his green reign. Instead of occasional performances at royal galas, or modern equivalents of the ‘It’s a Knockout’ television show, William could do some more serious acting, putting regal authenticity on a blockbuster movie of the recently abdicated King of Spain. One might say it’s purely coincidental that William and Juan Carlos show the same royal blood in their handsome facial features, and both were very eligible bachelors before tying the knot (and after, in the Spaniard’s case). Just imagine.
The White House, too, is no stranger to theatrical innuendo. A movie of Barack Obama’s ascent to the Oval Office will surely match Richard Attenborough’s Ghandi at the box office. For three years, a mentally frail Joe Biden has been cast as president, a role he is unable to play without the teleprompter and stage guides (even with such assistance he bumbles his lines and wanders from the podium looking lost until he finds a young girl’s hair to sniff).
Cynics suspect that the real commander-in-chief is Obama. For the coming election in 2024, many pundits feel that Biden has past his sell-by date. A far cry from the socialist boudoirs of Hawaii, or the halls of Columbia in Manhattan, the Kenyan-American attorney from the Democrat fiefdom of Chicago cannot run again, having served two terms, the baton may be passed to his highly popular wife. Michelle, whose global bestseller Becoming suggests a previous incarnation, is not keen to stand. Instead, she could help her husband to conquer the globe for a second time, advising Spielberg or Polanski on the younger Obama and his capricious lifestyle. That would also dispel those scurrilous conspiracies about his birthplace, paternity claims, and put paid to any salacious rumours of other dandy dalliances.
The world is a stage, and we just need to believe…
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Niall McCrae is a researcher and educator, and author of ‘The Moon and Madness’ (Imprint Academic, 2011), and ‘Moralitis: a Cultural Virus’ (Bruges Group, 2018). See his 21WIRE archive here.
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