As the One-Time Soviet Leader, the Late Great President Mikhael Gorbachev, Today Departed This Life...the Tragedy of How His Entire Life's Work Has Now (As He Himself So Rightly Understood) Been Effectively Undone By An Inadvertent, Wicked-Minded & Evil-Hearted (My Words) Successor *Cannot But Come Home to One & All...

*If they're paying any real attention, that is - and regrettably, few seem to be...

But at least he himself can rest in peace, well knowing (if no longer) that he himself did what he could to secure world peace for time and immemorial...

But as that wisest of men Solomon once said,

Wisdom is better than weapons of war; but one sinner destroyeth much good [italics all mine].

(It Had Looked Like) All Donald J Trump's Chickens Had Finally Come Home to Roost (for Him) As His (Ragtag Assortment of) Roosters One-by-One Chickened Out (on Him)...

But like ye proverbial magician extraordinaire he's managed to pull yet another rabbit out of his (grab-)bag of perpetual (Pandora Box) tricks (and treats)... 

"If You're Innocent, Then Why Take the 5th Amendment [To Refuse to Speak/Testify Under Oath]?" "Only Guilty People Take [Invoke] the 5th Amendment!" Right You Are, Mr (Ex-)President, Right You (Most Certainly) Are...And Guilty - Guilty - Guilty - As Charged: Self-Condemned (Like the Hapless Pharisees and Sadducees Millennia Ago)...

But regrettably it won't do a thing to stop you running again for the Republican Party nomination in 2024, securing this (by hook or more likely crook) and going on to re-take the presidency...

...and your nation and our world down with you...

Because, I sadly suspect, that King James Bible reference to 'the last trump' may well indicate that you'll be the very last American president to disgrace that once noble office before the Real Master returns...

...and deals to you and every other last evildoer...

For not he who commends himself is approved, but whom the Lord commends.

But Sir John Key Nevertheless Makes a Salient Point: Is It Worth *Going to WW111 Over?

*Though admittedly he didn't say so directly, but by implication the suggestion Pelosi's visit was "at best reckless, and at worst provocative and dangerous" we can at least surmise the gist of what he's implying...

However, sadly for himself, as a highly popular and electorally successful New Zealand Prime Minister - except for her 2020 landslide quite overshadowing his successor (in such regards) - one could; and I most certainly do charge his own government and/or his personal leadership thereof with letting New Zealand foreign policy flounder in a sea of self-servingness akin to selling one's soul to the very devil...

*for not extending the selfsame mercy to refugees that his own grandmother received fleeing the Holocaust...

*for actually flying God's Own proper, real, legitimate flag at halfmast upon the death of the Saudi prince of the day...

*for essentially making everything in terms of NZ foreign policy up for grabs to the highest bidder - irrespective of the moral illegitimacy of doing business with the particular nation in question...

Bravo to Someone (I.e. Speaker of the United States Congress & Second-In-Line to the American Throne, Nancy Pelosi) Willing to Stand Up to the Chinese Colossus By Touching Down in Taipei, Taiwan...But If By So Doing She Inadvertently, However Unjustifiably, Triggers the Ire of the Chinese Dragon, the Oriental Behemoth (Which Some Biblical Scholars Regard As Having At Its Disposal & One Day (Soon) Recruiting a '200 Million Member Army' to the Last Days' Middle-East-Sited 'Battle of Armageddon'), Some Could Equally Justifiably Enquire: Is It Worth the Price?

But some would counter (as JFK so memorably did on a couple very significant occasions, helping bring our world the closest to World War 111 as it's ever been up to now - excepting the Ukrainian situation obviously): 'Better dead than red" (i.e. better free to think, speak, do and be, even if that ultimately cost one one's very life, than to be subject to subjugation of mind, voice, life and being).

Or as the narrator in the brilliant 'War of the Worlds' double album expressed so poignantly to his beloved Kerrie: 

"There are some things worth living for...even some things worth dying for."

Or as the very prescient, even prophetic hymn writer James Russell Lowell put matters in his oh so insightful, arguably inspired hymn 'Once to Every Man & Nation' (stanzas 1,2,4a,b):

Once to every man and nation 

Comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of truth with falsehood,

For the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah,

Offering each the bloom or blight,

And the choice goes by forever

'Twixt that darkness and that light.

Then to side with truth is noble

When we share her wretched crust,

Ere her cause bring fame and profit,

And 'tis prosperous to be just;

Then it is the brave man chooses,

While the coward stands aside,

Till the multitude make virtue

Of the faith they had denied.

Though the cause of evil prosper,

Yet 'tis truth alone is strong,

Though her portion be the scaffold,

And upon the throne be wrong.

Or as Sir Cecil Spring-Rice put things a little differently in an ode, admittedly, to that now rather unpopular and admittedly somewhat discredited notion of 'my country, right or wrong', i.e. in his nevertheless beautifully expressed and sublimely affecting masterpiece 'I Vow to Thee, My Country':

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above, Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love: The love that asks the reason, the love that stands the test, That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best; The love that never falters, the love that pays the price, 

The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

(Stanza one.)

May we each (come to) possess such a love and undying passion for the truth no matter what price we may ultimately pay by/for cleaving to it, and our life here - whatever that in the hereafter - will not have been in vain...