Another Change of Address

 After having my own domain for a few years (O, Vanity!), I no longer desire to have dealings with web-hosting outfits.  So now I'm a Substacker.  After all, those undersea warships aren't going to stack themselves.

Blogger Jail

 Gee, Blogger doesn't permit a redirect to anywhere outside their little empire.  And when I comment elsewhere, my always-present "Google profile" points here, where I'm no longer actively blogging.  In case you want to read my stuff, please go here.  Thanks!

Change of Address

In case anyone's still looking at this -- and I can't imagine why anyone but comment bots would be -- I've moved my blogging, such as it is, to my copywriting site.  Not sure I can recommend that anyone click through.  I've only gotten more bitter and cynical with the passing years.

Cue the Calliope Music

As I keep saying, on the increasingly infrequent occasions on which I update this musty, cobwebby space, I do not vote.  This allows me to observe the political scene here in the You Ess of Ay with a certain amount of detachment, as well as a curious mixture of watching-a-train-wreck horror and low amusement.  And, of late ("late" being defined as the past four years or so), the childish insanity of what passes for public discourse here in the land of my birth has been snowballing at a rate that has rendered me mute.  It's a sort of paralysis, really: where does one even start?  So I don't start at all.  Perhaps I can turn that personal trend around, just a little.

We  are currently being entertained by The Impeachment Show.  It's easy to be distracted by the clownish performers: the self-parodying orange president, the pop-eyed and ridiculous Adam Schiff, and the incompetent calliope section which  styles itself "the press," both the electronic and the shuffling-zombie paper types.

I cherish a wan little bit of hope that a few of my fellow Americans are reading the more-significant subtext: that it really doesn't matter if they vote for change, as the vast and ponderous permanent infrastructure that rules over us will see that the voters' foolishness will have no untoward effects.  But, beyond the entirely reasonable response of avoiding the voting booth, I wonder what their choices might be.  "Ballots, not bullets" is, I think, bad advice.  It's a fully-reversible slogan, but I'm not convinced that reversing it improves it much as a guide to action.

My feeling is that, in one way or another, we're headed for the sort of rough ride that may prove difficult to survive.

The Swamp: Undrainable. Especially if You Don't Try

So, one Donald Trump got elected president a year and a half ago, claiming he'd try to do a couple of things.  Get control of the southern US border, and get out of Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama's stupid and catastrophic Middle East wars.  He's pretty well demonstrated that he wasn't serious about the border.  How about the war thing?


Here's Trump when campaigning for president:

On October 26, 2016, while campaigning against Hillary Clinton in the general election, Trump spoke at length about not intervening in Syria. "What we should do is focus on ISIS. We should not be focusing on Syria," said Trump as he dined on fried eggs and sausage at his Trump National Doral golf resort, as Reuters reported.

        "You’re going to end up in World War Three over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton,” he

         blasted.

"You’re not fighting Syria any more, you’re fighting Syria, Russia and Iran, all right? Russia is a nuclear country, but a country where the nukes work as opposed to other countries that talk," he continued.

And now, after his second missile-launching spasm in Syria:

I also have a message tonight for the two governments most responsible for supporting, equipping and financing the criminal Assad regime.

To Iran and to Russia, I ask: What kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women, and children?

The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep. No nation can succeed in the long run by promoting rogue states, brutal tyrants and murderous dictators.

 Campaigning in '16, Trump said we'd find ourselves in World War III, starting in Syria, if we listened to noted female impersonator Hillary Clinton.  This reminds me of the guy who said (and I know this dates me), "They told me in 1964 that if I voted for Goldwater, we'd be in a war.  And they were right.  I voted for Goldwater, and sure enough, we were in a war."

Of course, the WW III thing doesn't seem to have kicked off quite yet.  Trump's cruise-missile temper tantrum may not have killed any Russians.  But it's quite the sobering thought, that if a catastrophic nuclear war is avoided, that will be due to the stability and restraint of the Russian government.

And Trump asks: What kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women, and children?  Hey, Donny, remember Iraq?  Remember Saddam Hussein, who used to be our great ally against Iran?  Remember how we knew he had chem weapons?  Of course he had them; the Pentagon still had the shipping records.  Yes, sir, back when Saddam was our boy, using gas against those devil Iranians, we were good with that.  Every shell had American ink stamping on it.

How about your good friends in the Saudi regime, Donny?  "Mass murder of innocent men, women, and children?"  Ever hear of Yemen, Donny?  Hey, that isn't even ancient history from the 1980s.  That's still going on this week, with the active help of the You Ess Ay.

Maybe this is just Stormy Daniels wag-the-dog stuff.  Maybe it's just Trump's craving for the approval of those who will never give it; maybe it's just his complete inability to pay attention to any one thing for more than ten minutes at a time.  I don't really care.  I just hope the world doesn't pay an astronomical price for the orange-hair's folly.

Funny, If It's a Cartoon

But it's not.  President Mr. Magoo has found the key to the bomb locker, in both the Near East (Syria, Afghanistan) and the Far East (Korea).  The crap may or may not hit the fan in a major way.  But if it doesn't, I'm pretty sure it won't be because President Mr. Magoo has any awareness of the hazards, or the consequences.

This isn't a new problem, by any means.  For the better part of a century, All Respectable Opinion has held as axiomatic the very questionable notion that the world is something to be "managed" from the general neighborhood of Chesapeake Bay.  As a result, we've pretty well destroyed the Near East.  We're maintaining a goodly supply of uniformed hostages in South Korea, whose whole purpose is to be killed while serving as a human Patriotic Outrage tripwire.  Can't hardly get into a decent war without secular martyrs, you know.

So why didn't I vote for Hillary?  Because that would have been a vote for war.  Oh, so I must've voted for Trump, then?  Nope.  As we can see so plainly, that, too, would've been a vote for war.  No, in modern America, no candidate is permitted within sniffing distance of the Oval Orifice unless he or she is a known friend of the Grim Reaper.  And the only way to not vote for war is to not vote, period.  (You get war anyway, but at least you don't have to blame yourself for having asked for it.)

Good luck to us all.  We're all gonna need it.