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Donald’s No Trust in Others Cost Him Bigly — Us Too.

Kerry Landon-Lane
4 min readNov 29, 2020

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“I am proudly putting America first, just as you should be putting your countries first”

Donald illustration by Kerry Landon-Lane

They were words from this American President at the 75th year celebration of the United Nations. Well, it’s true that the US has always put itself first and at a guess other counties have done likewise. But, Donald’s first was different. It was a selfishness that seldom wins at an intimate person-to-person level or in the global world of nation-to-nation. The vital building block is trust — without this, valuable relationships don’t form or are not maintained.

I was brought up with a guy called James Wattie. He was a particular favorite with my mother. She reached for his green peas and canned spaghetti when in a fix to feed us hungry kids. James was a very successful New Zealander who owned not only food canning factories but in my young mind practically everything in the country, including “Rising Fast” — a race horse and winner of the Melbourne Cup. It turned out when James died that he didn’t have much of a pile after all. What he did have however were mountains of trust which he had steadfastly built up over the time I was growing tall — or at least tying to. It was trust in people who in turn trusted him. This was his “where-with-all” to build what he did.

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Kerry Landon-Lane
Kerry Landon-Lane

Written by Kerry Landon-Lane

OP-ED writer, designer and artist. Most recently returned to architecture and deliberately presents the subject void of buildings.

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