Trump Doesn’t Understand Why He’s Doomed to Lose against Iran
Dr Vernon Coleman
Note: The following extract is taken from Vernon Coleman’s new book entitled `The Horrors of the Great Reset and Why You Should Be Afraid.’
When I was a medical student in Birmingham in the English midlands, I ran a discotheque called The Gallows. I borrowed a huge, empty, cavernous building in the centre of Birmingham and tried to make it look as much like a club as I could. To make the place look more fun, I borrowed an epidiascope and a film projector from the medical school. I used the epidiascope to show histology slides on the walls and the film projector to show old black and white Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton films. I can’t even begin to think how many laws and regulations were broken.
(I forgot to ask the medical school for permission and foolishly mentioned their equipment, when I was interviewed on the BBC’s Light Programme. Even more unfortunately the Dean happened to be listening to the radio. I was ticked off and warned but in those days medical students were allowed to let off steam, misbehave and be a little naughty occasionally. It was regarded as acceptable because 18 or 19-year-olds were suddenly coming face to face with death and disease and were facing a lifetime of awesome responsibility. Besides, I was trying to provide entertainment for impoverished teenagers in a city where there was none. I made no money from my discotheque and never intended to. In fact it cost me money. Medical schools were much more understanding in those days. A medical student I knew borrowed a bus one evening (because bus services had stopped and he couldn’t get home) and three others borrowed a grit bin, though heaven knows why. The flat I shared with three other medical students was so full of road signs and cones that the local traffic police used to come round and borrow whatever they needed. If medical students did such terrible things these days they would be sent down, but fifty years ago such things were handled with more caution and understanding. I read not long ago of medical students being thrown out of their medical school for having wheelchair races in a hospital corridor at 3 am. I very much doubt if there is a doctor over the age of sixty who didn’t enjoy wheelchair races. Are today’s doctors, hollow caricatures, better than yesterday’s doctors? I think you’d have a hard job arguing that they are. The majority of doctors of my generation were hard working and took on huge responsibilities the moment they were entitled to put ‘Dr’ in front of their name. Today’s young doctors insist on working 23 hour weeks, and they go on strike at the drop of a payslip if they think they aren’t being paid as much as rock stars or hedge fund managers.)
After a few weeks, I discovered that a group (or more accurately, I suppose, a gang) of youths were living in the discotheque’s attics. They had made a home in the space. They all carried knives. There were repeated confrontations with other people who legitimately used the building – including a boxing club. I had no trouble with the gang. I carried a Victorian swordstick in those days. It had (or has) a three foot long steel blade and since it was longer and more deadly than their weapons it gave me status and authority.
Fighting other gangs to defend their home often left the members of the gang wounded (cuts and broken limbs were a rite of passage) and confrontations with the police (who were called when the fighting became too noisy or spread out into the street) meant that most of them were not seen for a few weeks at a time. I talked to them often and I asked them once if they were not afraid or concerned by their lifestyle. ‘This is all we’ve got,’ said one, meaning their home in the attic and their membership of their gang. When I pointed out that they could die fighting for their home, they all responded in the same way. They didn’t care because dying was, to them, no worse than losing the only world they’d got.
I think of them often when I hear idiots like Donald Trump talk about crushing the Iranian people. And I remember how Trump’s predecessors were defeated by the Vietnamese and the Afghans. People like Trump, spoilt and protected, do not understand people who will never allow themselves to be crushed by bullies. People in beleaguered countries will die rather than be shamed or see their country taken from them.
Taken from `The Horrors of the Great Reset and Why You Should be Afraid’ by Vernon Coleman
The book is available from the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com
Copyright Vernon Coleman September 2026
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