{"id":7747,"date":"2019-07-23T23:48:27","date_gmt":"2019-07-24T06:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=7747"},"modified":"2019-07-24T05:37:03","modified_gmt":"2019-07-24T12:37:03","slug":"post1-65","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=7747","title":{"rendered":"“Boris Johnson Faces a Swift and Bloody Nemesis “, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Roger Coehn, Opinion Columnist, July 23, 2019<\/p>\n

Or he could, like his hero Churchill, be remembered for a single act of bravery.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Boris Johnson, the incoming British prime minister, is a classical scholar. So he will understand: after hubris, nemesis. The gods are watching. The moment of retribution is upon him. Nemesis comes much as Hemingway described the onset of bankruptcy: first slowly, then suddenly.<\/p>\n

Retribution? Johnson has played with his country, treating it like one of his many dalliances, with a sloppiness and fecklessness no wit or charm can excuse. He backed a British exit from the European Union on a whim \u2014 in the expectation it would be rejected \u2014 and has since become a pawn of the Brexit ultras, the crazed little-England monomaniacs who have now delivered him to 10 Downing Street.<\/p>\n

It is a moment of perfect symbolism<\/a>: a man without a conviction for a country without a direction, a man of self-destructive tendencies for a country in the vise of a crippling decision. The gods, when they are most cruel, also laugh.<\/p>\n

In Donald Trump, consuming vanity is coupled with consuming ignorance. Johnson is equally vain but not equally ignorant. Trump\u2019s wacko meets Johnson\u2019s eccentricity.<\/p>\n

Johnson has lied, pandered and guffawed his disheveled way to the highest office in the land, aping the bumbling buffoon and doing great damage. But he\u2019s no fool. He knows his comeuppance is upon him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n